{"id":11787,"date":"2011-09-08T12:41:01","date_gmt":"2011-09-08T11:41:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/?p=11787"},"modified":"2011-09-08T12:41:46","modified_gmt":"2011-09-08T11:41:46","slug":"sep-08-2011-uk-tax-deals-create-%e2%80%9cone-of-largest-money-laundering-operations-in-history%e2%80%9d","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/2011\/09\/08\/sep-08-2011-uk-tax-deals-create-%e2%80%9cone-of-largest-money-laundering-operations-in-history%e2%80%9d\/","title":{"rendered":"UK tax deals create \u00e2\u20ac\u0153one of largest money laundering operations in history\u00e2\u20ac\u009d"},"content":{"rendered":"

I have reposted the following<\/a> from the Treasure Islands blog with Nick Shaxson's permission:<\/em><\/p>\n

From\u00a0The Telegraph<\/a>:<\/p>\n

Tax amnesties \u2014 such as the deal announced with Switzerland last month \u2014 help criminals gain respectability and risk turning HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC) into \u201cone of largest money-laundering operations in history\u201d a leading barrister claims.
\n. . .
\n[Jonathan Fisher QC<\/a>] described the recent agreement between the United Kingdom and Switzerland as a \u201cgrubby little deal\u201d and claimed that further tax amnesties planned for next year \u201cpresent a colossal opportunity for money launderers to legitimise the proceeds of crime\u201d.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Indeed, indeed.<\/p>\n

Now HMRC, which I believe to be an organisation filled with dedicated professionals whose work is\u00a0tainted<\/a> by its leadership, denied all this, of course:<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is complete nonsense, there is not a shred of evidence to support these claims. HMRC has robust measures in place to prevent fraud against the tax system.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Now first of all, they would say that, wouldn\u2019t they? But also \u2014 given that they have guaranteed secrecy to UK criminals using Swiss banks, with only very meagre avenues for obtaining information about those accounts, where you effectively have to know the information you\u2019re looking for before you ask for it, and can\u2019t use whistleblowers \u2014 how could they possibly know that it is \u2018complete nonsense?\u2019<\/p>\n

Absence of evidence is a very different thing from evidence of absence. In the absence of evidence, and when secrecy is at the heart of the matter, we have to presume that Fisher is quite right. In fact, knowing that criminals exploit secrecy at every opportunity, how could it be otherwise?<\/p>\n

More from the Telegraph, which has recently shown\u00a0good form<\/a> in asking difficult questions here:<\/p>\n

\u201cLast month\u2019s HMRC offer to Britons with hidden Swiss bank accounts raised questions about whether it was applying one law to very rich tax evaders and another, harsher, regime to the less wealthy.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

It did more than raise questions. This is, quite literally, and quite precisely, what HMRC has done here: create different sets of rules for different classes of people.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I have reposted the following from the Treasure Islands blog with Nick Shaxson’s permission: From\u00a0The Telegraph: Tax amnesties \u2014 such as the deal announced with
 Read the full article…<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16,107,80,63,32],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11787","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ethics","category-hmrc","category-secrecy-jurisdictions","category-switzerland","category-tax-havens"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11787","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11787"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11787\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11787"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11787"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11787"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}