Dreadful revelations about tax avoidance facilitated by HSBC….thank God for the BBC and the Guardian who have exposed this scandalous state of affairs.
That’ll be the HSBC tax avoidance scandal story that is at least 5 years old and actually first surfaced in 2007/08.
Here’s a headline from 2010…
Mass Leak of Client Data Rattles Swiss Banking
And the Guardian in 2012 about the money laundering scandal:
Lord Green ‘regrets’ HSBC scandal but still refuses to answer questions
Note that the Guardian makes no mention of the tax evasion that HSBC was already known to have been involved in.
Indeed here we have the proof of that involvement, also from 2012…
The £200m question: Trade minister Lord Green linked to Swiss HSBC tax scandal
And we know that at the latest Labour knew of the tax evasion in 2010..
The HMRC in 2010 received data smuggled out of HSBC by a former bank IT worker, now under arrest in Spain and facing possible extradition to Switzerland, that contained details of 6,000 UK-linked individuals, companies and trusts.
And yet Labour didn’t object to Stephen Green being made a Peer or a Trade Minister…and said nothing about tax evasion and HSBC in 2010.
How can they now demand an explanation from the Government about Green’s elevation without admitting they must have turned a blind eye themselves…after all they were in government for 13 years, regulating the Banks all that time, and they probably knew about HSBC’s activities since 2008…..they were sent information from the ‘whistleblower/thief’ but now deny having received any information…can that really be true?
Maybe the BBC should ask a few questions.
And the BBC’s ‘bombshell revelation’ that HSBC boss Stephen Green was made a peer in 2010 by the Tories (Did Labour object then I think not) was clearly known in 2010….yep, not a peep from Labour at the time…
HSBC chairman Stephen Green named Trade Minister
It would be ridiculous to suggest that the timing of these latest revelations was deliberate and the BBC and the Guardian has sat on them until a time as near to the election as they dare go without looking blatantly like they are pushing a Labour propaganda stunt….ridiculous maybe, but it does look that way.
Just pure coincidence that this BBC/Guardian investigation times its publication a few days after this blast from Labour…
Ed Miliband issues warning to UK-controlled ‘tax havens’
The BBC tell us that the information came to light when ‘leaked by a whistleblower in 2007.’
But he wasn’t a whistleblower at all, he was a thief whose original sole intention had been to sell the data to other competing banks…
Whistleblower? Thief? Hero? Introducing the Source of the Data that Shook HSBC
According to Falciani, he made attempts to interest authorities in other countries about the data and the wrongdoing it revealed.
The bank and Swiss officials tell a different story: that Falciani stole the data and hoped to profit from it, first by shopping it to banks in Lebanon and then by offering it to authorities in countries outside of Switzerland.
The BBC tells us Labour denies all knowledge of this…
Labour’s Rachel Reeves, shadow work and pensions secretary, defended the Labour party against accusations of inaction against tax evasion when it was in power.
“This behaviour by HSBC wasn’t unearthed until 2010 so it’s not something Ed Balls [City minister in 2007] or the last government could have done anything about,” she told Radio 5.
However Falciani claims to have sent information to many governments…
Once Falciani and Mikhael returned from Lebanon, they contacted European tax authorities and intelligence agencies, offering “the client list of one of the world’s largest wealth management banks,” according to Swiss police reports. “Tax evasion: client list available” was the subject line in the emails, according to The Wall Street Journal, which also noted that the emails didn’t ask for money.
The anonymous emails carried a tantalizing subject line: “Tax evasion: client list available.”
The messages, sent two years ago to tax authorities across Europe, made an audacious claim: The sender could provide a large client list of a Swiss-based private bank, plus access to its computer systems. The emails were sent to Germany’s secret police, the French police and the U.K.’s tax authorities and foreign ministry.
Why is the BBC not questioning Balls and Co rather than accepting outright denials from Labour?
So the BBC makes a great splash about tax avoidance days after Labour and Miliband announce their policy on tax havens and tax evasion.
Just a coincidence that when Miliband goes into battle on ‘inequality’…Ed Miliband: wealth creation means tackling inequality the BBC’s, son of a Labour Peer, Robert Peston, is banging the drum for them with some programmes on ‘The Price of Inequality’
Robert Peston speaks to leading policymakers and opinion shapers as he charts the new consensus that inequality is the biggest economic challenge we face.
Well if you believe Labour.
Any coincidence that as reports come in that Labour are losing the Middle Class vote…It’s the guilty, middle-class voters will finish off Labour…the BBC is once more banging the drum to a Labour tune with programmes like this ‘Clinging on: The Decline of the Middle Classes’
Is the middle-class in terminal decline? Writer David Boyle, author of Broke: Who Killed the Middle Classes?, explores the split between a small rich elite and those who are argued to be clinging on to a deteriorating lifestyle and falling expectations.
Any coincidence that the BBC makes headline news of anything that might be construed as damaging to the Tories but downplays or ignores similarly damaging news on Labour?
Why did the BBC make so much noise about this story that no one but a poltiical geek would bother with?….
Tories’ £100,000 a month Facebook bill
Perhaps this from the BBC’s Ross Hawkins can explain…
“The fact they are outspending the Labour Party many, many times over because of the support from millionaire donors is going to have an impact.
“That’s something the Labour Party can respond to by out-organising the Conservatives.”
That message suits Labour, whose supporters like to emphasise that the Conservatives have more cash.
Why did the BBC make so much noise about the King’s Fund claims about government reforms of teh NHS when patient satisfaction is at an almost record high?
Overall public satisfaction with the NHS increased to 65 per cent in 2014 – the second highest level since the British Social Attitudes survey began in 1983. Dissatisfaction with the service fell to an all-time low of 15 per cent.
I think you can make a good case that the BBC is providing Labour with an invaluable propaganda service in the run up to the election…or that is certainly the impression you might get from even the most cursory examination of the BBC’s coverage of recent events.
Two points arise in my mind (well actually many, but these two for the moment):
1. When did it become acceptable to rely upon stolen information for a journalistic story?
2. A search round the private banking world will identify that most if not all the non-Swiss private banks have Swiss subsidiaries.
Coutts for instance do, so why focus on HSBC? Oh, because they had data stolen from them a long time ago.
I often wonder why the Tories do not slam the BBC, Labour and the Guardian’s rank hypocritical nose direct into the dirt at every opportunity and bring up the broadcasters and indeed the Guardians own record in avoidance of tax, (and National Insurance of its own staff and stars by the BBC), to the tune of millions.
Since the BBC is so decidedly biased against the Tories why do they shy away from fighting their corner with them?
After all you cannot get more of a juicy hypocritical point than being funded by taxes and avoid paying them yourself!
The media monitoring department of the Tory party is Missing in Action and have been for some 20 years. They have let Labour and the BBC (including the print arm) walk all over them ever since Tony Blair took over the Labour party and probably since Maggie took over the Tory party..
They don’t spot the attacks & bias, they don’t counter it and they don’t even think it needs addressing.
“….or that is certainly the impression you might get from even the most cursory examination of the BBC’s coverage of recent events.”
Which is, probably, what most people give it. How many folks pop onto the BBC website for a quick 2 min look at the news (me, for one). On such quick looks opinions are formed, and votes are cast.
As well the BBC knows.
I have just been reading in the Economist about a tax assault on the Swiss. It starts
‘In 2007 Bradley Birkenfield, an American employed by UBS approached officials in Washington. His revelations about the bank’s surreptitious servicing of thousands of rich tax dodging Americans started a war on Swiss money men.’ The article goes on to say that lots of banks are involved and that the legal process is mired in delays.
This sounds awfully familiar. Perhaps the BBC should have asked the City Minister at that time, one Ed Balls, what he knew about this and why he thought it wasn’t happening with UK banks.
It is deeply troubling that just like the Phone Hacking scandal that also took place on Labour’s watch that the BBC have conspired to point the fingers at the Tories.
Labour, courtesy of the BBC have yet again been able to get away without having to account for their actions.
But not only that, the choreography has allowed Labour’s predators versus producers meme, their Tory ‘fat cat’ meme to be reinforced by the BBC, three months before an election.
Not just deeply troubling but depressing, for anyone that cares about democracy, to see the BBC, the Guardian, ‘Lady’ Hodge of Stemcor, The International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (a founder member being a former General Secretary of the Labour Party), Revd Giles Fraser and other vested interests and usual suspects pile in to misrepresent both the nature and size and timeline of the matter.
The BBC are arch-hypocrites as we all know.
For the likes of Humphrys-or indeed Snow on Chanel No 4-to plead on behalf of the “common man”, as they wheedle millions from the States teat is truly despicable.
And no one calls them out on it.
The Tories are shit-if they can`t see what the elite, the public sector ponces, the quangocracy are up to in continual sleaze shifting and in Black Ops( er-well , Ops of colour anyhoo)-then they`ll be just as complicit in the End Of Days Settlement to come, as the worst Socialist/Green blowhard.
We used to have Thatcher and Tebbit-we now have the likes of Theresa May and Grant Shapps FFS.
About time the arch hypocrites that dare to presume to speak for us were outed and tipped out of their closets so we can see how much they`ve pilfered from the rest of us…and attracted islam into fancying its chances with the foppish, fucked-up elite that infest our screens and screeds in the broadsheets.
They don`t speak for us-witness their fearless scorn for Assad, whilst telling us all that Jordan killed the American girl last Friday at Muslim prayers-`cos IS said so.
They burn pilots in cages-they have f***all to say in the 21st Century-and need lopping off in the grisliest manner possible.
You and Yours, 12.15 Radio 4 with Winifred Robinson discussing tax avoidance and tax evasion. Winifred’s constant incredulity whenever anyone said they wanted to minimise their tax and huge praise for those who wanted to pay their tax to help those less fortunate than themselves. Amazingly neither Winifred mentioned nor was any comment from a listener read out about the high earning Beeboids who made themselves freelance or worked for the BBC through a limited company to minimise their tax. Incidentally our accountant explained it wasn’t legal if you do the majority of your work for one company. How did that work for the Beeboids?
Oh, the irony, of The Guardian’s po-faced and self-righteous stance on this, and the horrors of the, er, perfectly legal (if morally questionable) tax avoidance.
Surely not the same Guardian whose parent company is so expert in, er, ahem……well I’ll let you decide….
http://fw.to/USUiu8a
What irritates me is the BBC equates tax minimisation – and even evasion – ethically with cutting benefits. The suggestion is that you lose all moral authority if you minimise tax to criticise benefit entitlements. The end conclusion is pretty obvious: you cannot have benefit cuts if there is tax avoidance, much less evasion. But this is a category error. People have no natural desire to give their earned income to the state so will naturally minimise, occasionally step over into illegality. Yet, it must be emphasised it is their money. Now benefit receivers are receiving transfer payments from those who have earned the money. This is mandated by the state and is given. The recipients do not have to ethically justify this income flow. They, of course, will maximise the amount of benefits with the government and various agencies providing as much help to receive as much as possible, occasionally stepping over into illegality. There is no equivalence here because you have one group giving money and another group receiving said money. The ethically good would always be the givers; the receivers have no ethical value. The only equivalence is honesty regarding providing honest answers to the state. Both the taxpayer and the benefit receiver can both lie and be criminally liable. The tax minimiser, insofar as they did provide honest answers which they did, is not ethically compromised. This is also true of the benefit receiver. Only honesty is the issue because dishonesty creates avoidance of payment by the possessor of the money to the state and increased access to money provided by the taxpayer. But overall there still is an imbalance ethically structurally because the receiver is dependent upon the giver.