{"id":4838,"date":"2009-09-21T10:39:25","date_gmt":"2009-09-21T08:39:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/?p=4838"},"modified":"2009-09-21T10:39:25","modified_gmt":"2009-09-21T08:39:25","slug":"bbc-panorama-tax-inquiry-into-lloyds-off-shore","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/2009\/09\/21\/bbc-panorama-tax-inquiry-into-lloyds-off-shore\/","title":{"rendered":"BBC &#8211; Panorama &#8211; Tax inquiry into Lloyds off-shore"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/news.bbc.co.uk\/panorama\/hi\/front_page\/newsid_8261000\/8261135.stm\">BBC - Panorama - Tax inquiry into Lloyds off-shore <\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>More on tonight's Panorama.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Other publicly funded banks are also continuing to do business off-shore in traditional tax havens.<\/p>\n<p>Among them is Northern Rock - which was bailed out by the taxpayer with \u00a327bn at the start of the banking crisis in 2008.<\/p>\n<p>It has an offshore subsidiary in Guernsey and has seen deposits almost double to \u00a32bn since the bank was nationalised.<\/p>\n<p>A banker from Northern Rock in Guernsey told Panorama's undercover customer that he could avoid the EU tax rules by opening an account in the name of a non-trading company. The Northern Rock banker said the customer should inform the Inland Revenue.<\/p>\n<p>But the bank itself keeps the details secret from the taxman.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>This one is staggering: Northern Rock will not open an account in Guernsey for a trading company, only for a shell company.<\/p>\n<p>They offered this as a way round the European Union Savings Tax Directive.<\/p>\n<p>They must know this allows evasion. The endorsement of a shell indicates to me that they know that.<\/p>\n<p>I think this is staggering misconduct. Not evasion or fraud on their part, but staggering misconduct.<\/p>\n<p>And there is one answer: Northern Rock Guernsey must be closed.<\/p>\n<p>Note: as an adviser to the programme I have read the transcript of the conversation referred to in the BBC article.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>BBC &#8211; Panorama &#8211; Tax inquiry into Lloyds off-shore . More on tonight&#8217;s Panorama. Other publicly funded banks are also continuing to do business off-shore<br \/><a class=\"moretag\" href=\"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/2009\/09\/21\/bbc-panorama-tax-inquiry-into-lloyds-off-shore\/\"><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":[70,14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4838","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-banking","category-corruption"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4838","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=4838"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4838\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4838"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4838"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4838"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}