{"id":33423,"date":"2016-05-11T08:14:47","date_gmt":"2016-05-11T07:14:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/?p=33423"},"modified":"2016-05-11T08:14:47","modified_gmt":"2016-05-11T07:14:47","slug":"are-nigeria-and-afghanistan-corrupt","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/2016\/05\/11\/are-nigeria-and-afghanistan-corrupt\/","title":{"rendered":"Are Nigeria and Afghanistan corrupt?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The <a href=\"http:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/uk-news\/2016\/may\/10\/david-cameron-afghanistan-nigeria-possibly-most-corrupt-countries\" target=\"_blank\">Prime Minister has suggested Nigeria and Afghanistan are corrupt<\/a>. And he's right if you think that <a href=\"http:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/2016\/05\/09\/we-need-to-move-the-corruption-debate-on\/\" target=\"_blank\">corruption is solely about those who abuse public office or tax systems for personal gain<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>He failed to mention the fact that a whole of army of lawyers, accountants and bankers, many in tax havens, are required to undertake this abuse. Prof Prem Sikka has called them <a href=\"http:\/\/taxjustice.blogspot.co.uk\/2011\/09\/pinstripe-mafia.html\" target=\"_blank\">The Pinstripe Mafia<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>And if you think more broadly about corruption then having a banking system that systemically mis-sells, where key financial data has been routinely rigged and <a href=\"http:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Documents\/Intheshade.pdf\" target=\"_blank\">where we permit 400,000 companies a year to disappear without trace because we cannot be bothered to enforce company law<\/a>\u00a0might also be considered signs of serious failure with regard to corruption.<\/p>\n<p>But David Cameron is looking in the wrong direction. As a result he thinks Nigeria and Afghanistan are spectacularly corrupt. Actually we are too. <a href=\"http:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Documents\/PCSTaxGap2014Full.pdf\" target=\"_blank\">A tax gap of \u00a3120 billion is the evidence of that<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Time to take action on the home front, I suggest.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Prime Minister has suggested Nigeria and Afghanistan are corrupt. And he&#8217;s right if you think that corruption is solely about those who abuse public<br \/><a class=\"moretag\" href=\"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/2016\/05\/11\/are-nigeria-and-afghanistan-corrupt\/\"><em> Read the full article&#8230;<\/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":[14,50],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-33423","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-corruption","category-tax-gap"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33423","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=33423"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33423\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=33423"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=33423"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=33423"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}