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Those naughty banks; luckily the government are on their case.....



Diego Napier

Well-known member
Mar 27, 2010
4,416
Britain's biggest bank helped wealthy clients cheat the UK out of millions of pounds in tax, the BBC has learned.
Panorama has seen thousands of accounts from HSBC's private bank in Switzerland leaked by a whistleblower in 2007.
They show bankers helped clients evade tax and offered deals to help tax dodgers stay ahead of the law.
HSBC admitted that some individuals took advantage of bank secrecy to hold undeclared accounts. But it said it has now "fundamentally changed".
The documents, stolen in 2007 by a computer expert working for HSBC in Geneva, contain details of more than 100,000 clients from around the world.
Offshore accounts are not illegal, but many people use them to hide cash from the tax authorities. And while tax avoidance is perfectly legal, deliberately hiding money to evade tax is not.
The French authorities assessed the stolen data and concluded in 2013 that 99.8% of their citizens on the list were probably evading tax.

The thousands of pages of data were obtained by the French newspaper Le Monde. In a joint investigation, the documents have now been passed to theInternational Consortium of Investigative Journalists, the Guardian newspaper, Panorama and more than 50 media outlets around the world.
The documents include details of almost 7,000 British clients - and many of the accounts were not declared to the taxman.
HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC) was given the leaked data in 2010 and has identified 1,100 people who had not paid their taxes. But almost five years later, only one tax evader has been prosecuted.
HMRC said £135m in tax, interest and penalties have now been paid by those who hid their assets in Switzerland.
But the chairwoman of the Public Accounts Committee, Margaret Hodge MP, said: "I just don't think the tax authorities have been strong enough, assertive enough, brave enough, tough enough in securing for the British taxpayer the monies that are due."
HSBC did not just turn a blind eye to tax evaders - in some cases it broke the law by actively helping its clients.
The bank gave one wealthy family a foreign credit card so they could withdraw their undeclared cash at cashpoints overseas.
HSBC also helped its tax-dodging clients stay ahead of the law.
When the European Savings Directive was introduced in 2005, the idea was that Swiss banks would take any tax owed from undeclared accounts and pass it to the taxman. It was a tax designed to catch tax evaders. But instead of simply collecting the money, HSBC wrote to customers and offered them ways to get round the new tax. HSBC denies that all these account holders were evading tax.

Richard Brooks, a former tax inspector and author of The Great Tax Robbery, said: "I think they were a tax avoidance and tax evasion service. I think that's what they were offering. They knew full well that people come to them to dodge their tax liabilities."
The bank now faces criminal investigations in the US, France, Belgium and Argentina. HSBC said it is "co-operating with relevant authorities". But in the UK, where the bank is based, no such action has been taken. The man in charge of HSBC at the time, Stephen Green, was made a Conservative peer and appointed to the government. Lord Green was made a minister eight months after HMRC had been given the leaked documents from his bank. He served as a minister of trade and investment until 2013. He told Panorama: "As a matter of principle I will not comment on the business of HSBC past or present."


HSBC said it has completely overhauled its private banking business and has reduced the number of Swiss accounts by almost 70% since 2007.
In a statement, the bank said: "HSBC has implemented numerous initiatives designed to prevent its banking services being used to evade taxes or launder money."
The bank said it now puts compliance and tax transparency ahead of profitability.
But Panorama has spoken to a whistleblower who said there were still problems with tax dodging at HSBC private bank when she worked there in 2013.
Sue Shelley was the private bank's head of compliance in Luxembourg. She said HSBC did not keep its promise to change. "I think the verbal messages were great but they weren't put into practice and that disturbed me greatly," she said.
It was her job to make sure HSBC followed the rules, but she said she was sacked after raising concerns. She has since won a tribunal hearing for unfair dismissal.
Watch Panorama: The Bank of Tax Cheats on February 9 at 20.30 GMT on BBC1.
 

beorhthelm

A. Virgo, Football Genius
Jul 21, 2003
35,237
if you're a HSBC customer, you should probably be more concerned about the "wistleblower" taking the account information from the bank. thats the real story here, not that a bank offers offshore bank accounts.
 


lawros left foot

Glory hunting since 1969
Jun 11, 2011
13,664
Worthing
if you're a HSBC customer, you should probably be more concerned about the "wistleblower" taking the account information from the bank. thats the real story here, not that a bank offers offshore bank accounts.

As I don't have an offshore bank account, I'm much more concerned that a major U.K. bank broke the law(again)and has appeared to get waway with it (again)
 

Hampster Gull

New member
Dec 22, 2010
13,462
Zero morals. Only the little people pay taxes. Go for the individuals and jail, then fine the company
 
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severnside gull

Well-known member
May 16, 2007
24,540
By the seaside in West Somerset
Or in the case of Lord Green, not so much get away with it but actually BE REWARDED after the fact for his part in the bank acting illegally. You've got to love CallMe Dave and his "we're all in this together" fiscal policies.
 


Barham's tash

Well-known member
Jun 8, 2013
3,612
Rayners Lane
One if you think this type of activity is limited to one and not ALL banks everywhere then you're bloody naive and two are any of you on here stupid enough not to want a way to legitimately pay less tax than you do now by adopting mechanisms within the legal framework established by whichever entity/jurisdiction chooses to do so to attract foreign investment/assets?

Yes it's galling that the top 1% of wealth 'get away with' this sort of activity more than the rest of us but thus it was and always will be.

The real story here is the data going missing but the left wing propaganda press only want you to see one thing in a run up to an election that their beloved Labour party will lose and that's the complicit nature of the upper echelons of the Tory party in this sort of activity whilst very conveniently and deliberately forgetting that it was the de-regulation of said Labour party that made it even easier for banks to adopt these sorts of practices and others leading to the Financial crisis of '08. Makes me so angry.
 

lawros left foot

Glory hunting since 1969
Jun 11, 2011
13,664
Worthing
One if you think this type of activity is limited to one and not ALL banks everywhere then you're bloody naive and two are any of you on here stupid enough not to want a way to legitimately pay less tax than you do now by adopting mechanisms within the legal framework established by whichever entity/jurisdiction chooses to do so to attract foreign investment/assets?

Yes it's galling that the top 1% of wealth 'get away with' this sort of activity more than the rest of us but thus it was and always will be.

The real story here is the data going missing but the left wing propaganda press only want you to see one thing in a run up to an election that their beloved Labour party will lose and that's the complicit nature of the upper echelons of the Tory party in this sort of activity whilst very conveniently and deliberately forgetting that it was the de-regulation of said Labour party that made it even easier for banks to adopt these sorts of practices and others leading to the Financial crisis of '08. Makes me so angry.

One, it may well be all banks, but that doesn't make it right.
Two, it is fiddling tax illegally that is the main thrust of this whistleblowers revalation,and prosecution are already taking place in other countries.
If thes illegal and immoral practices are kept hidden as you aopear to want, then yes, they will continue, because greed is good apparently.
In the de-regulation of the financial institutions of 1997 onwards the Conservatives pressed for even more loosening of Government controls than Labour allowed, and were very critical of Brown because in their eyes he didnt go far enough, all conveniently forgotten by the right wing press
 


Barham's tash

Well-known member
Jun 8, 2013
3,612
Rayners Lane
One, it may well be all banks, but that doesn't make it right.
Two, it is fiddling tax illegally that is the main thrust of this whistleblowers revalation,and prosecution are already taking place in other countries.
If thes illegal and immoral practices are kept hidden as you aopear to want, then yes, they will continue, because greed is good apparently.
In the de-regulation of the financial institutions of 1997 onwards the Conservatives pressed for even more loosening of Government controls than Labour allowed, and were very critical of Brown because in their eyes he didnt go far enough, all conveniently forgotten by the right wing press

I don't want things hidden and no greed is not good but there is no way in hell that it will ever be eradicated FACT. The sooner we all just get on with our lives the better.

There are indeed prosecutions ongoing and this bank may well be punished for wrong doing - the laundering of money or being allegedly complicit in laundering the proceeds of crime deserves to be punished but you can sure as hell believe that things have changed dramatically in that respect.

Are you aware of the UBS whistleblower extradited to the US, and serving time in a federal institution, also received over $100m for his whistleblowing? (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bradley_Birkenfeld

It's this sort of behaviour by authorities that forces certain people to look at currently legitimate ways of avoiding certain taxation. Where's the morality or humility in a Government giving a whistleblower a huge sum of money so that it can recoup what it believes are unpaid taxes for citizens of said country who believe they have acted in the bounds of the current law?

The whole thing is utterly and totally warped.
 

Machiavelli

Well-known member
Oct 11, 2013
16,523
Fiveways
if you're a HSBC customer, you should probably be more concerned about the "wistleblower" taking the account information from the bank. thats the real story here, not that a bank offers offshore bank accounts.

You're opposed to whistle-blowers, now. I wonder whether anyone else is on here?
And what a strange place to invoke it, exposing the 'privacy' of exorbitantly wealthy tax dodgers. Can you confirm to us whether the identities of these have been revealed?
 


El Presidente

The ONLY Gay in Brighton
Helpful Moderator
Jul 5, 2003
39,688
Pattknull med Haksprut
Calling it a hatchet job before it airs?

It is obvious from the news that this was tax evasion.

I think the person whose views you queried thought this was an hour of TV wasted that could be better spent demonising those on benefits.
 

beorhthelm

A. Virgo, Football Genius
Jul 21, 2003
35,237
You're opposed to whistle-blowers, now. I wonder whether anyone else is on here?
And what a strange place to invoke it, exposing the 'privacy' of exorbitantly wealthy tax dodgers. Can you confirm to us whether the identities of these have been revealed?

if the "whistleblower" could walk out with 100k records of high value customers, how easy to walk out with 100k of low value. or a million. do you see? this is a 7 year old story and information has been with HMRC for 4 years according to the article, why it wasnt passed on immediatly should make you wonder the motives for the theft. im not in the least bit surprised a bank should be aiding its customers in avoiding tax. Panorama isnt the programme it was once.
 

yxee

Well-known member
Oct 24, 2011
2,521
Manchester
if the "whistleblower" could walk out with 100k records of high value customers, how easy to walk out with 100k of low value. or a million. do you see? this is a 7 year old story and information has been with HMRC for 4 years according to the article, why it wasnt passed on immediatly should make you wonder the motives for the theft. im not in the least bit surprised a bank should be aiding its customers in avoiding tax. Panorama isnt the programme it was once.

This is not tax avoidance, it is tax evasion which is an illegal practice.

It is made all the more wrong when a major banking group acts as a facilitator.
 


Simster

"the man's an arse"
Jul 7, 2003
54,093
Surrey
if you're a HSBC customer, you should probably be more concerned about the "wistleblower" taking the account information from the bank. thats the real story here, not that a bank offers offshore bank accounts.

No, no it isn't. Why are you always so pathetic when there is story that smears the Tories?
 

beorhthelm

A. Virgo, Football Genius
Jul 21, 2003
35,237
No, no it isn't. Why are you always so pathetic when there is story that smears the Tories?

why have you read into my point somthing that i've not said? if it wasnt for the data theft, i was going to completly ignore the old story. im not sure how much it smears the Tories when it happened in 2007, other than their appointing the chap running HSBC into government, but thats par for the course and again barely worth a story. im highlighting the biggest news in this story is the apparently lack of security within the banks. Panaroma should have investigated this instead.
 

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