Will Panorama be exposing the family dirty secrets?…..
Tax Havens of the Rich and Powerful Exposed
The rich and powerful have hidden billions of dollars in tax havens. They thought their financial secrets were safe, but now a huge leak of documents has revealed a world of secrecy, lies and crimes. Reporter Richard Bilton exposes tax dodgers, criminals and world leaders who have been hiding their money and their secrets offshore.
From Guido…secrecy, lies and crimes?…or just massive hypocrisy and lack of morality from the Guardian?…..the Public need to know….
A Tip-Off For the Guardian Investigations Team
Today’s Guardian splashes on millions of leaked emails revealing the “secrets of the super-rich” using offshore tax havens to hide vast sums of money from the Exchequer. One company was missing from the list: GMG Hazel Acquisition 1 Limited, registered and still active on the Cayman Islands. The last time Guido asked the company’s owners, Guardian Media Group, for an explanation he was told their spokesperson was, er, abroad. When Guido asked Liz Forgan of the Scott Trust what was going on, she tried to blame it on Apax, GMG’s investment partner. Even Alan Rusbridger promised to look in to it, making a note of the company name on his phone.
Always one to help their journalists get to the bottom of the mystery, Guido suggests the Guardian’s investigations team take a look at the following:
- If GMG Hazel Acquisition 1 Limited holds no assets, why have its owners continued to pay registration fees since 2007 so it can remain an active company?
- If it does hold assets what is the total present value of GMG and associated companies’ assets held via the Cayman Islands or other offshore tax havens?
- Does GMG Hazel Acquisition 1 Limited have “sham” nominee directors, if so, who are they?
If they could answer these questions, now that would be a great story…
Further reading on the Guardian’s tax hypocrisy:
- Guidorama Investigation: Guardian Offices Owned Offshore
- The Guardian: Uncut and Full of Cant
- Guy News Special: Inside the Guardian’s Tax Dodges
- Tax Avoidance Firm Slammed By Guardian Advises Guardian
- The Guardian’s Poll Tax Moment
- Guardian Attacks the Tax Status of the Guardian
- Guardian’s Tax Hypocrisy is Ridiculous
Name and shame the tax avoiders. I believe some of the culpable names include David Camerons late father, Lionel Messi, Lady Sharples and Michael Mates.
See Wiki thread below
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panama_Papers
“Name and shame the tax avoiders.”
Hmmmm. Shame someone who has done absolutely nothing wrong ? What would they be ashamed of ?
And if you want to name every tax ‘avoider’, then there would be a list of people as long as your arm – i.e. for a start, every ISA investor – they are using a financial vehicle to avoid paying tax – so should we name and shame all of them too ?
The specific individuals you named above may well have acted totally legally – just because they have been ‘named’ in these papers and ‘linked’ to a financial institution which may or may not have acted in accordance with the law, may mean nothing at all, other than that they personally have been acting in accordance with the law to minimise their tax liabilities – nothing different from millions of other people. After all, weren’t all the major UK banks (with very few exceptions) found guilty, and fined, for actually breaking laws – does that mean that, for instance, every customer of RBoS, HSBC, Lloyds, Barclays, etc. should be ‘named and shamed’. ?
Now, if and when any evidence comes to light regarding illegal activities – i.e. tax ‘evaders’ are identified – then, by all means, lets name and shame them. So far – not a lot of evidence to support any of the people you named being pilloried.
This is quickly heading towards a lynch mob mentality, ably and willingly supported by the likes of the BBC.
Sort of agree with that Richard d
I meant to write evader and not avoider. No excuse but me not checking what i wrote was the problem. I shall do lines in penance.
Putin’s cellist mate is leading enquiries of non tax payments at the door of Putin.
I do not see that if you are rich you should have at your disposal, the means and capability of not having to pay taxes. The payment of taxes should not be determined by how wealthy one is. I hope the evaders get hammered., by who though, themselves!
I am instantly minded by the Latin phrase
‘Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? translated says who guards the guards.
Not exactly new news…from the Guardian in 2012…
‘David Cameron’s father ran a network of offshore investment funds to help build the family fortune that paid for the prime minister’s inheritance, the Guardian can reveal.
Though entirely legal, the funds were set up in tax havens such as Panama City and Geneva, and explicitly boasted of their ability to remain outside UK tax jurisdiction.’
Note that ‘entirely legal’.
Bu wouldn’t it be delicious if someone, anyone, in these leaked papers, no matter how tenuously, was associated with a certain Mr Barack Obama, and that was touted (pretty much as David Cameron’s name has been) and run by the ‘right-wing press’ as a headline, in the same way as we’ve seen all over some media today, as Mr Obama being linked to this controversy ? Or Ms Clinton ?
I think we’d see then just how far the likes of the BBC or the Guardian would portray such a link – or would it, as I suspect it might be, just get airbrushed out ?
Dimbleby?
Attenborough?
Porritt?
Benn?
Miliband?
Toynbee?
Jonathan(fuckin) Miller?
Oh the possibilities are aimless.
Don`t mind them shafting the political orders as long as they turn their glare onto the media luvvies that they nest among.
Would love to see the House of Dimble-Attenborough come a crashing(bore) down.
New blood for the deadbeat blue blood zombie bank on the fifth floor Quentin-poos!
Oh PLEASE let B-liar be in there somewhere!
However, as richard D says, being a Tax avoider is nothing to be ashamed of – I can utilise my assets far more effectively than any colour of Government. Nonetheless, anyone being proven to be a Tax Evader – let loose the Dogs of War….
As the Guardian and the BBC are in control of the list and it is they who are deciding whose names to release, we may never know.
One hopes that the BBC freebie air tickets for boyfriends will not be forgotten when it comes to the tax return!
As usual the BBC is being very selective about who it names. It could not wait to name Vladimir Putin’s friend, apparently,and Assad’s brother.
Failed to mention Lionel Messi, Petro Poroshenko the President of Ukraine and Saudi Arabia’s King Salman.
How is this tax avoidance less moral than for example
1. Hazel Blears flip-flopping her homes to max out on the parliamentary expenses?
2. Ditto Balls-Cooper. Both on £170k cabinet salaries at the time, yet carefully nominating their first and second homes to max out on the housing expenses.
All ‘completely legal’ of course and ‘within the rules’.
What short selective memories the Far Left have.
My view on it is if you’re paying more than the legally required minimum amount of tax then that’s extortion committed by the state. It’s the fault of those who make the tax laws that it’s so difficult to achieve that legal minimum.
I don’t often re-post, but I thought it was appropriate here (orig. on BB):
The ICIJ [the organisation that curated the leak] apparently took it upon themselves to:
(a) Unilaterally maintain secrecy not only on the actual material of the leak, but also the very fact of the leak’s existence, for a whole year;
(b) Unilaterally select just 80 journalists to have access to, and knowledge of, the leak, during that year, for purposes of analysis, and to
(c ) Unilaterally time and co-ordinate selective releases of, not the leak itself, but the journalistic analyses from its own sources, and to selected media.
The nature of a leak is that it is, in principle, the uncontrolled release of unedited information for unconstrained public consumption. What we have here so far, is controlled, edited information which actively constrains the public’s ability to access it in its entirety.
When control, editing and targeting has been exercised over an extended period, as here, we are entitled to be highly suspicious of:
(a) the status of the entire source,
(b) the integrity and even-handedness of those analysts who have interposed themselves between the public and the source, and
(c ) the motivation of the ICIJ as an organisation that has interfered with the free flow of information that is implied by the whole idea of a leak.
It is paradoxical that what claims to be an act of investigative journalism, turns out to require investigation into its own actions..