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.