Noel Hodson Blog: TAX-EVASION-CAPITAL-FLIGHT

REFORM, REVOLT OR WAR?
OUR GOVERNMENTS WILL CHOOSE.

A REAL AND CLEAR GLOBAL DANGER.

UPDATE 15TH APRIL 2013 ACTION THIS DAY

Tax-evasion-capital-flight is a greater “Real and clear danger” to the world than is North Korea. It has bankrupted Greece and Cyprus, and is bankrupting Spain, Portugal and Italy. It has drained the UK, USA, Russia and other major economies of working capital and threatens the global system. The OECD Paris 2010 estimate is of $21,000,000,000,000 (twenty-one-trillion dollars – 70 million jobs) stashed in tax-havens. The 2008/09 collapse of UK and USA banks cost $3 trillion of tax payers money; tax-haven funds increased by $3 trillion in the same period. This indicates that the losses, on which the banks claim tax-relief, are in fact back-to-back trades where money appears to be “lost” in Wall Street or London but reappears in dummy companies in tax-havens, controlled by the same persons.

The Guardian newspaper’s headline of 4^th April 2013 is “Secrets ofthe rich who hide cash offshore” which includes business people at every level and senior government figures and some Finance Ministers; from many different countries.

New Rules on UK Tax-Avoidance - Tax Avoidance is rescinded.

4 April 2013

Guardian - The leak of 2m emails and other documents, mainly from the offshore haven of the British Virgin Islands (BVI), has the potential to cause a seismic shock worldwide to the booming offshore trade, with a former chief economist at McKinsey estimating that wealthy individuals may have as much as $32tn (£21tn) stashed in overseas havens.

DER SPEIGEL - An international network of journalists ICIJ has obtained some 2.5 million records from tax havens detailing shell companies, offshore accounts and dubious financial deals. The unprecedented leaks include the names of 130,000 people who at one time or other moved their money offshore.

CANADA - In what is believed to be one of the largest ever leaks of financial data, the Washington, D.C.-based International Consortium of Investigative Journalists has received nearly 30 years of data entries, emails and other confidential details from 10 offshore havens around the world.

CBC News has partnered with the ICIJ over the last seven months to gain exclusive Canadian access to the information. Thirty-seven media outlets in 35 other countries are also involved.

Taxation - European Commission welcomes tax evasion revelations

Revelations published on 4 April exposing a vast international web of tax evasion have come as a blessing for the European Commission. The fight against tax havens is one of the European Union executive’s top priorities, but it has complained that EU member states are dragging their feet on the issue.
The International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, based in Washington, has published an extensive list of public figures - diamond dealers from Antwerp, the treasurer of the 2012 French presidential campaign, as well as Indian, Georgian, Russian and Thai oligarchs, and funds collectors for the American Democratic party - who have carried out a total of around 2.5 million transactions (not necessarily illegal) in certain jurisdictions considered as tax havens, such as the Cayman Islands and the British Virgin Islands.

Australia - The innocent.

Russia - FROM CBC 4th April 13 - ...The company, Commonwealth Trust Limited or CTL, operated out of the British Virgin Islands, one of the most secretive jurisdictions in the shadowy world of offshore finance. Founded by Toronto millionaire Tom Ward, CTL's business was registering and administering new BVI corporations for a global clientele. While there's no evidence CTL or Ward actively participated in schemes to rob the Russian treasury, documents found amid a massive leak of financial records indicate that the company often failed to check who its real clients were and what they were up to — a practice that allowed the colossal fraud at the heart of the Magnitsky case to unfurl.

SILENT CHINA - What $32 trillion? Where? Hear no evil - See no evil - Speak no evil.

Financial Times

April 4, 2013 8:30 pm

Data leak exposes BVI investors’ names By Vanessa Houlder and Elizabeth Rigby

The investigative magazine Private Eye, issue 1337, 3 April 2013, identifies major professionals previously involved in siphons to tax-havens, who are now embedded at the top of the

’s anti-tax-fraud departments. The report cites Chairman of the board of HMRC (HM Revenue & Customs), Ian Barlow, ex-KPMG one of the world’s biggest tax-planners; – Commercial Secretary to George Osborne, The Chancellor of the Exchequer, Paul Deighton, ex-Goldman Sachs London chief; - and Chairman of the Pensions Regulator, Michael O’Higgins, ex-PA Consulting. Who appointed these financial engineers into positions of such power?

The global tax-evasion community has hundreds of “sleepers” embedded in nations’ tax collections systems to try to ensure that “tax-planning” works. A retired senior international corporate finance director assured me there is no conspiracy but said “They will never be able to trace the transactions”. I think he is out of touch with modern computing. After last month's Cyprus bank collapse, confiscating Greek and Russian tax-haven assets, would you trust the tiny Caribbean populations to guarantee your illegal hoard?

Previous Private Eye investigations cite a relationship between Dave Hartnett, ex-head of HMRC who personally “settled” several immense corporate tax bills at very low prices before scuttling into the private tax-planning sector, and Head of the National Audit Office, Amyas Morse – who, oddly, found nothing wrong with Dave’s Deals.

Three months ago, my Member of Parliament wrote to The Treasury asking if any elected or appointed persons in the UK government have off-shore companies or bank accounts. We await their findings. But, recent reports of major tax-evasion by senior French, Greek, USA, British, Russian, African, Chinese, Middle-Eastern, Pacific Rim and other regions’ executives – and of dentists, footballers, doctors, plumbers, pop-singers and all – demonstrate that the majority of “top” people evade tax on an unprecedented scale. The Lagarde List of 2059 Greek’s with secret accounts at HSBC Zurich confirms the extent of tax-evasion-capital-flight.

Fewer than 0.5% of the global population, 3.5 million, have hidden assets off-shore, most contravening tax-laws, – and are now on strike, unable or unwilling to invest in the world’s future. These few frightened selfish souls have to be re-educated into letting go of “their” money – or suffer the Cyprus Solution. Unemployed graduates and youngsters, the oppressed poor, and the majority 99.5% population, will not wait much longer before reacting with anger.

The destructive race to the bottom of tax-rates that even major countries, such as Britain and America, have entered is wrecking the global economy and must be reversed. All the tax-haven funds (about 70 tax-havens have been listed with their secrecy-ratings) must be repatriated to the economies from which the funds have been siphoned – and the $21 trillion invested in modern industries to give our children and our grandchildren jobs, to feed the starving, heal the sick and to set the world on course for a new era of unparalleled immense prosperity.

YES we can! – Mr President Obama. Get on with it!

GLOBAL REACTION TO TAX-HAVEN DATA - EXCEPT ...the UK?

No tax-havens please - We are British.

DAME MARGARET THATCHER 1925-2013.

CYPRUS - THE BUTTERFLY'S WING