{"id":8,"date":"2015-02-17T19:27:03","date_gmt":"2015-02-17T17:27:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/audenbergbrokers.co.za\/newsletter\/?p=8"},"modified":"2015-02-17T19:31:23","modified_gmt":"2015-02-17T17:31:23","slug":"8","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/audenbergbrokers.co.za\/newsletter\/8.htm","title":{"rendered":"Tax Evasion will catch up with you!"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>Tax evasion<\/strong><br \/>\n<strong>Hiding Sir\u2019s Black Cash<\/strong><br \/>\n<strong>The leaking of old data creates fresh problems for HSBC<\/strong> \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0Feb 14th 2015 | From the print edition : The Economist<\/p>\n<p>IN 2008 Herv\u00e9 Falciani left Switzerland for France, armed with account information on more than 100,000 customers of the Geneva\u00a0branch of HSBC, where he had worked as a systems engineer. Much of the data, stolen to expose alleged tax evasion, was this week made\u00a0public in a coordinated\u00a0splash by a group of media outlets, including the Guardian and the BBC.<br \/>\nIt is not the first leak of its kind, but it is among the biggest. The haul, dating from 2005 to 2007, includes hundreds of\u00a0embarrassing documents, from internal emails\u00a0breezily discussing undeclared client funds to details of \u201cbricks\u201d of cash being handed over\u00a0to account-holders.<br \/>\nThe owner of the Ivy restaurant in London withdrew SFr5m ($4m) in cash in a single day\u037e his lawyer has said this\u00a0involved no impropriety. The leak dents the image of the London based\u00a0bank and may give it a legal headache. It also shows Britain\u2019s tax\u00a0authority to be a laggard.<br \/>\nFrance began sharing the files with other governments in 2010. Criminal cases are piling up there\u2014and in Belgium, Spain and Argentina.<br \/>\nFrance has concluded that more than 99% of its citizens on the list were likely to be evading tax. Despite saying in 2011 that all 6,000\u00a0British held\u00a0accounts in the files were \u201cripe for investigation\u201d, the authorities have collected just \u00a3135m ($230m) in tax, interest and\u00a0penalties\u2014less than 1% of the estimated total in the accounts. Only one person has been prosecuted. British lawyers and regulators have\u00a0taken no action against HSBC (Sir Simon Robertson, a non-executive<br \/>\ndirector at the bank, is also on the board of The Economist Group).<br \/>\nA broader AngloSwiss\u00a0agreement on reclaiming tax evading\u00a0money has also disappointed by bringing in around \u00a31 billion in two years\u2014\u00a0about one third<br \/>\nof the amount that had been expected. This allows formerly tax-shy\u00a0Britons to pay overdue taxes and penalties\u00a0anonymously through their offshore\u00a0banks via a withholding arrangement.<\/p>\n<p>The agency\u2019s defenders say it took a\u00a0\u201cpragmatic\u201d approach to the HSBC files, concluding that the best way to maximise\u00a0revenue was to offer tax evaders a brief\u00a0window during which they could come clean and pay reduced, civil penalties. Criminal\u00a0prosecutions are costly and tricky, especially when the data is stolen, and may have\u00a0netted even less. But with lurid details appearing daily in newspapers, the taxman seems\u00a0timorous.<br \/>\nComing shortly before a general election, the revelations have kicked up a political\u00a0storm. Conservative MPs have gleefully pointed out that the misdeeds revealed by the\u00a0leak took place during the previous, Labour, administration. Labour figures retort that\u00a0they did not come to light until the coalition was in power, and that David Cameron\u00a0made Lord Green, HSBC\u2019s boss at the time, a minister some time after it should have\u00a0been clear that the bank was in HMRC\u2019s sights.<br \/>\nLabour was campaigning against tax evasion and aggressive tax planning by companies even before this debacle. Ed Miliband, the party\u2019s\u00a0leader, has taken aim at Britain\u2019s offshore dependencies, such as Jersey and Bermuda, threatening them with blacklisting\u2014even though\u00a0they are more compliant with global anti-moneylaundering\u00a0standards than most OECD countries. Now they look even more like the wrong\u00a0targets. Mr Cameron has made a crusade out of stamping out banking and corporate secrecy.<br \/>\nThe questions for the bank are whether it reacted quickly enough to tighten compliance with tax laws after governments started to\u00a0investigate in 2010, and how much pain the scandal will cause. It has moved to put its house in order: its Swiss business now has 70% fewer\u00a0private-banking\u00a0customers than it did in 2007, and its global head count in risk and compliance has risen to 24,000\u2014a tenth of the\u00a0workforce. Still, a whistleblower\u00a0(who was subsequently sacked) identified poor controls at the private bank as recently as 2013.<br \/>\nHSBC is already under the cosh on both sides of the Atlantic for past sins, including facilitating sanctions evasion and the laundering of\u00a0drug money. To settle these, it paid $1.9 billion to the Americans, who are now reportedly considering revoking the associated deferred prosecution\u00a0agreement. In Belgium, whose diamond dealers were big users of HSBC Geneva, prosecutors talk darkly of issuing\u00a0international arrest warrants for the current and former heads of the bank if it does not cooperate.<br \/>\nIn Britain, too, calls for scalps will grow\u00a0louder\u2014at least until the election.<br \/>\nFrom the print edition: Britain<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Tax evasion Hiding Sir\u2019s Black Cash The leaking of old data creates fresh problems for HSBC \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0Feb 14th 2015 | From the print edition : The Economist IN 2008 Herv\u00e9 Falciani left Switzerland for France, armed&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v19.7.1 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Tax Evasion will catch up with you! 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