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HSBC Helped Clients Dodge Tax - Report

Written By Unknown on Senin, 09 Februari 2015 | 23.34

HSBC's Swiss banking arm helped wealthy customers avoid tax and hide millions of dollars, according to a report by a network of investigative journalists.

The British banking giant provided accounts to international criminals, corrupt businessmen, politicians and celebrities, secret files analysed by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) show.

The documents have led to criminal investigations in several countries and attempts to get the money back after being stolen by an IT worker in 2007 and passed to authorities in France.

David Cameron has today been forced to defend Lord Green, who ran the bank during the period in question and was appointed as a trade minister in 2010 - the same year HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC) received data on potential British offenders in the files.

Details of the 30,000 accounts, which hold nearly £78bn of assets, are coming to light after the files were obtained by the French newspaper Le Monde and analysed by the ICIJ.

The files are reported to include evidence that the bank colluded with some clients to hide accounts from tax authorities in their home countries.

While holding a secret bank account is not illegal, they have been used by some to deliberately conceal assets to dodge tax, which is against the law.

"HSBC profited from doing business with arms dealers who channelled mortar bombs to child soldiers in Africa, bag men for Third World dictators, traffickers in blood diamonds and other international outlaws," the ICIJ reported.

According to the files, the bank's clients included former and current politicians from Britain, Russia, India and a number of African countries.

Those named in the files include people sanctioned by the US, such as Turkish businessman Selim Alguadis and Gennady Timchenko, an associate of Russian President Vladimir Putin who was the subject of sanctions over the Ukraine crisis.

HMRC was passed the data - known as the Lagarde List - in 2010 and has since then clawed back £135m from some of the 3,600 Britons identified as potentially avoiding tax.

But some MPs have complained about HMRC's perceived slow progress and the fact that only one evader has been prosecuted to date.

The revelations have sparked a blame game between the Conservatives and Labour over the failure to tackle the problem of hidden accounts and tax evasion.

Ed Miliband said there were questions over the appointment of Lord Green, a former chief executive and chairman at the bank.

He said: "I think this is a very serious situation and the Government has some serious questions to answer.

"We need to know why HMRC apparently did not act, apart from at the margins, on the information that they seem to have been given about what was going on.

"We need to know from the Government why they appointed Stephen Green of HSBC as a trade minister well after this information was passed to HMRC.

"I would like to see the Government explain what they did.

"We cannot have a country where tax avoidance is allowed to carry on and where government just turns a blind eye."

Commons Public Accounts Committee chair Margaret Hodge said she was "astonished" that Lord Green was not answering questions about the files.

She said the former HSBC chairman was either "complicit" or "wasn't on top of his job properly" and suggested he or current HSBC bosses could be called to face her committee on Wednesday.

The Prime Minister said Lord Green was an "excellent" trade minister who "did a good job".

City Minister David Gauke told Sky News he "was not aware of any evidence" that Lord Green had been involved in any improper activity.

Mr Gauke called on Shadow Chancellor Ed Balls, who was City Minister in the years up to 2007, to make an urgent statement in the Commons about what he knew about the claims and why the Labour government allowed large-scale tax avoidance and evasion to take place.

Responding to an urgent question from Labour in the Commons, Mr Gauke said the UK had been barred from seeking prosecutions on issues other than tax evasion, but French authorities have now agreed to provide "all assistance necessary" to allow HMRC to fully exploit the HSBC data.

Mr Balls said: "Nobody will fall for yet more desperate distraction tactics from George Osborne and the Tories when it is clear that this information was first given to the government in 2010."

The bank said in a statement that since the period in question, it had "implemented numerous initiatives designed to prevent its banking services being used to evade taxes or launder money".

"Although there are numerous legitimate reasons to have a Swiss bank account, in some cases individuals took advantage of bank secrecy to hold undeclared accounts," the statement continued.

"This resulted in private banks, including HSBC's Swiss private bank, having a number of clients that may not have fully met their applicable tax obligations.

"We have taken significant steps over the past several years to implement reforms and exit clients who did not meet strict new HSBC standards, including those where we had concerns in relation to tax compliance," it added.

"We are fully committed to the exchange of information with relevant authorities and are actively pursuing measures that ensure clients are tax transparent, even in advance of a regulatory or legal requirement to do so.

"We are also co-operating with relevant authorities investigating these matters and we acknowledge and are accountable for past control failures."

HMRC said in a statement: "We have systematically worked through all the Lagarde data.

"As a result tax, interest and penalties have now been paid by those who hid their assets in Switzerland to get out of paying tax.

"The decision to prosecute is made by the Crown Prosecution Service based on the facts."


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Miliband Threatens To Blacklist Tax Havens

By Jon Craig, Chief Political Correspondent

Tax havens such as Bermuda, Jersey and Guernsey will have six months to open their books or face international blacklisting if Labour wins the General Election in May, Ed Miliband has vowed.

The Labour leader has accused David Cameron of failing to follow through on demands that all overseas territories and crown dependencies adopt transparency measures being introduced in the UK.

Agreement on action to expose the owners of "shell companies" used to evade tax was hailed by Mr Cameron as a key achievement of the G8 summit in Northern Ireland in 2013.

He said then: "The UK is today leading the way by committing to create a central registry of company ownership.

"Each and every one of our overseas territories and crown dependencies has agreed to sign up to the multi-lateral convention on information exchange to exchange information automatically with the UK and to produce action plans on beneficial ownership."

But so far, according to Mr Miliband, none of the countries around the world over which Britain retains sovereignty has accepted the Prime Minister's appeal to them to "move forward together in raising standards of transparency" and some have ruled out reform.

Among the 10 countries whose leaders were called to No 10, Bermuda has rejected calls to make public the companies registered there.

So too have the Cayman Islands. Gibraltar has taken no further action. Neither has Guernsey or the Isle of Man.

In a letter to the leaders of the overseas territories and crown dependencies, Mr Miliband put them "on notice" that, if elected in May, his government would refer any that failed to produce publicly accessible central registers of beneficial ownership - who profits from a company - to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD).

"I am writing to put you on notice that a Labour government will not allow this situation of delay and secrecy to continue," he wrote.

"Labour will act on tax avoidance where the Tories will not," he added, ending protection from international scrutiny and requesting OECD blacklisting.

Mr Miliband, accused this week of being anti-business, told a conference of Labour councillors in Nottingham: "The current Conservative leadership have become the political wing of offshore hedge funds.

"Unlike them, we will not stand by. We will ensure a country where everyone plays by the rules, from top to bottom."

But a Conservative Party spokesman said: "People should judge Ed Miliband by his record, not his rhetoric.

"For 13 years - including when he was an adviser in the Treasury - Labour did absolutely nothing to tackle tax avoidance. This shows that Ed Miliband is simply too weak to deliver on what he promises.

"In contrast, we are tackling the problem head-on. David Cameron put tax dodging at the top of the global agenda at the UK's G8 summit, securing major new international rules to ensure that companies pay what they owe."


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Ministers Plot New Energy Switching Drive

By Mark Kleinman, City Editor

Ministers are to unveil a fresh drive urging consumers to switch energy companies just weeks before the main parties pledge renewed oversight of the industry in their general election manifestos.

Sky News understands that Ed Davey, the Energy and Climate Change Secretary, will spearhead a renewed push to encourage the public to consider alternatives to their existing gas and electricity tariffs.

Mr Davey's latest intervention, which Whitehall insiders said would take place the week after next, is designed to remove the sting from Labour's repeated accusation that the Coalition has done too little to help millions of consumers.

This week, the consumer group Which? said the big six energy companies had failed to pass on price cuts in full despite a round of recently announced reductions, costing the average household £145 a year.

The group said its research highlighted a failure to align retail prices with wholesale costs, which meant that consumers had paid an extra £2.9bn during the last year.

The Government's new switching push will not specifically target customers of the six biggest suppliers – British Gas, EDF Energy, E.On, Npower, Scottish Power and SSE – but will highlight the recent cut in the time it takes to switch provider.

Last month Mr Davey claimed the Government had "introduced more competition in the energy market and made it much quicker for people to switch energy supplier".

"Industry is delivering on my challenge so now my challenge is for more consumers to take advantage. There's never been a better time to shop around, switch and save money faster than ever before," he said.

Mr Davey added that companies were being challenged to further reduce the switching timetable to 24 hours as soon as possible.

Ministers are expected to use this month's initiative to say that households which shop around could save more than £200 annually on their energy bills, as well as a new Confidence Code agreed between Ofgem, the industry regulator, and switching sites.

Matthew Hancock, the Conservative Business and Energy Minister, met the bosses of the big six companies last month to discuss whether recent price cuts were sufficiently generous to consumers.

"Political factors have... become increasingly significant over the last few years, particularly as we approach the UK general election," Paul Massara, Npower's chief executive wrote in a letter to Mr Hancock ahead of their meeting.

"Any change in prices in the short term will inevitably have to take account (of) potential outcomes after May this year," he added.

The price cuts have been announced even though Labour leader Ed Miliband plans to freeze energy prices until 2017 if the party wins the General Election in May.

Last month Labour was defeated in a House of Commons vote to secure support for powers for the regulator, Ofgem, to be able to force companies to reduce consumer bills in line with wholesale price movements.

Labour was forced to adapt the language of its energy policy, insisting that the freeze was actually intended to be a cap, although it continues to use the original language in online material promoting one of its flagship policies.


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HSBC List Causes Shockwaves In India

By Neville Lazarus, India Reporter

The HSBC list contains 1,195 clients in India, where the stashing of 'black money' in Swiss banks and tax evasion are major political issues.

There have been public protests and movements during the last few years over this issue, and in the general election of 2014. 

The then opposition party, Narendra Modi's BJP, had promised to get this money back and the pledge was one of the reasons the party won power.

There is an ongoing probe by a Special Investigation Team (SIT) appointed by the Supreme Court of India into the issue of 'black money' in Swiss accounts. The court is monitoring the investigations and the government's attempt to get the illegal money back.

The names of several top businessmen, diamond traders and politicians have been revealed in the latest HSBC list.

They include legitimate account holders who have declared their accounts to the tax authorities and also holders of undeclared accounts who face tax bills and penalties - and possible prosecution. 

The Indian Finance Minister Arun Jaitley said that the "list has new names".

He added: "And the details that have come out today are ones we already have, (the) question is not about names but evidence that we need."

According to the minister, about 400 of the names on the list submitted to the court have been identified and 250 have admitted to holding foreign 'black money' accounts.

The government has begun legal proceedings against 60 people who allegedly had large sums stashed away in illegal foreign accounts.

Independent investigation by income tax authorities has allegedly established that tax evasion took place in these cases.


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Warning Over TV Which Listens In On Users

Samsung has warned people against discussing sensitive and private information in the vicinity of its new smart televisions - because it will be translated into text and stored in a central computer.

The new privacy policy for the voice-activated television allows the company and its partners to listen in on everything that people say.

The policy states: "Please be aware that if your spoken words include personal or other sensitive information, that information will be among the data captured and transmitted to a third party through your use of voice recognition.

"While Samsung will not collect your spoken word, Samsung may still collect associated texts and other usage data so that we can evaluate the performance of the feature and improve it."

Samsung insists that the data is encrypted to keep it safe, and points out that owners can disconnect their TV from wifi to keep their data secure.

In a statement it said: "In all of our Smart TVs we employ industry-standard security safeguards and practices, including data encryption, to secure consumers' personal information and prevent unauthorised collection or use."

However, without an internet connection the voice recognition feature stops working entirely.

While lots of voice-recognition devices use an internet connection to better translate sounds into actions, the storing and sharing with third parties is a particular privacy concern for some Samsung users.

The privacy policy was first highlighted by a Reddit user, and many of the comments compared the situation to the telescreens described in George Orwell novel 1984.

In the book, Orwell wrote: "Any sound that Winston made, above the level of a very low whisper, would be picked up by, moreover, so long as he remained within the field of vision which the metal plaque commanded, he could be seen as well as heard."


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Bank Warns Public On 'Free Trial Scams'

Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) has called on regulators to intervene after accusing firms offering free product trials of taking its customers for a ride.

The bank said that since June last year it had helped 37,000 customers halt charges, usually £80 a month, that were hidden in the small print in 30-day 'free trial' deals for beauty and nutrition products.

It said that the so-called deals - often advertised through social media - "took advantage of consumers" who believed they were only handing over a small fee for postage.

"Clever advertising and pop-ups on social media websites lure customers into what they believe to be a free trial of a cream or tablet.

"They are asked to enter their card details to pay a small fee to cover postage and packaging.

"In reality, by providing their card details and entering the free trial they are agreeing to a recurring subscription, if they do not cancel within the trial period.

"At its worst point, RBS and NatWest were receiving over 390 calls a day from customers to complain of charges of around £80 a month being applied to their accounts that they did not recognise.

"Customers receive the goods but don't know about the recurring costs associated or that they have to stop the trial.

"Subscription details and charges should all be laid out in the terms and conditions (T&Cs) of the agreement, but the bank has found instances where the T&Cs only appear after the customer has agreed to them, where they're hidden at the bottom of the page or where they're greyed out making them near impossible to find.

"The bank estimates that at its peak this was costing customers over £30k per day and over £2.9m in fees since June last year."

RBS said it had raised the issue with Visa, MasterCard and Cards UK and provided them with the details of merchants causing regular complaints and as a result over 1,000 companies had been stripped of their acquirer relationship.

Terry Lawson, head of fraud at RBS added: "Too many of our customers have fallen victim to these scams.

"We want to help raise awareness so that both our customers, and the wider public, are aware of these scams and look out for unclear or confusing T&Cs."


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Q&A: The Secret HSBC Bank Tax Files Explained

HSBC's Swiss bank has been accused of helping some clients evade tax, according to a huge number of files about secret accounts that have been published. But what exactly is the bank alleged to have done?

:: Were the practices illegal?

HSBC, the world's second-largest bank, is facing claims that its Swiss banking arm helped some clients dodge taxes and conceal millions of dollars-worth of assets.

According to the Guardian, which was part of a group of news outlets that obtained the files, HSBC's Swiss private bank allowed practices including: Regularly permitting clients to withdraw bundles of cash, often in foreign currencies that would be of little use in Switzerland; marketing tax avoidance strategies to wealthy clients; colluding with some clients to hide undeclared accounts from authorities; and allowing high-risk customers, including international criminals and corrupt businessmen, to have accounts. Holding a secret bank account isn't illegal, but it's against the law to use it to deliberately hide cash to dodge tax.

:: Who is said to have been involved?

The documents contain details of more than 100,000 clients from around the world, according to the BBC, one of the media outlets that has seen them. The Guardian reports that, "Hollywood stars…. royalty and clothing merchants feature in the files, along with the heirs to some of Europe's biggest fortunes".

The paper also claims the files show that HSBC's Swiss bankers were prepared to help convicted blood diamond dealer Emmanuel Shallop. One memo says: "The client is currently being very careful because he is under pressure from the Belgian tax authorities who are investigating his activities in the field of diamond tax evasion." The newspaper reports that in another memo, an HSBC manager apparently discusses how a London-based financier and his partner could "cheat" on Italian tax, saying: "The risk for the couple is, of course, that when they return to Italy the UK tax authorities will pass on information on them to the Italian tax authorities. My own view on this was that… there clearly was a risk."

:: How did the files emerge?

The documents are based on data that was originally exposed by a former HSBC employee-turned-whistle-blower, named Hervé Falciani, and handed to French authorities in 2008.

According to The International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ), the French newspaper, Le Monde, obtained the material from a French tax authority investigation into the documents. It then shared them with the ICIJ, which pulled together a team of more than 140 journalists, from 45 countries, to sift through the data. The Guardian says the documents have formed the biggest banking leak in history.

:: Were Britons involved?

The files include details of almost 7,000 British clients, according to the BBC - although it's not known how much was held in their accounts. HM Revenue and Customs was passed the leaked data in 2010 and has managed to claw back £135m from some of the 3,600 Britons who were identified as using the Swiss branch of HSBC to potentially avoid tax.

:: Who was in charge of the bank at the time?

Stephen Green - now Lord Green - was the man in charge of HSBC during the period covered by the files. He served as the Chief Executive of the global bank and then went on to become Group Chairman. In 2010, he left to become a minister of trade and investment in David Cameron's government, a position he held until 2013. He told the BBC's Panorama programme: "As a matter of principle I will not comment on the business of HSBC, past or present".


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Labour Vows To Give New Dads Four Weeks Off

Labour will significantly boost paternity leave if it wins the election - doubling to four weeks the time fathers can take off and adding more than £100 a week to match the minimum wage.

The plans are expected to cost the taxpayer at least £150m a year if they succeed in raising the take-up by around a quarter, an amount the party says would be more than offset by savings in tax credits from extending free childcare.

Labour is launching what it has dubbed "Father's Month" as part of a coordinated push of family-friendly policies.

Leader Ed Miliband contrasted the paternity leave reform with the Conservative promise of a tax break for married couples.

"The Tories want to spend £700m on what they call a married couple's allowance but which in fact will go to just one in five families with children," he said.

"Instead, at the heart of Labour's plan is the belief that Britain succeeds when modern working families succeed.

"That means giving dads, as well as mums, the chance to spend more time at home in those crucial weeks after babies have been born."

Enacting the reforms, which were first proposed by the left-leaning IPPR think tank last year, would benefit up to 400,000 families a year, the party said.

Under the current rules, new fathers qualify for a statutory £138.18 a week, equivalent to £3.45 an hour for a 40-hour week.

Employers are encouraged to make up the gap between this and the employee's usual pay.

But only just over half of new fathers (55%) currently take it up.

Increasing the taxpayer-funded contribution to the minimum wage level would increase take-up to around 70%, the IPPR estimates.

This would cost the Treasury around £150m in 2015/16.

Labour also said House of Commons figures show its policy of extending free childcare to three and four-year-olds - funded by a levy on the banks - would save "significantly" more in tax credits than the cost of the increased paternity pay.

"The modern British family needs government to be more flexible in what it does to help," Mr Miliband said.

"Thanks to the last Labour government, fathers have two weeks' paid paternity leave.

"Millions of families have benefited, with parents saying this has helped them support each other, share caring responsibilities and bond with their children.

"But the money isn't great - and too many dads don't take up their rights because they feel they have to go back to work so they can provide for their family."

The policy has come in for some criticism from business leaders, with British Chambers of Commerce director general John Longworth saying Labour's proposal amounts to "a tax on business".

Federation of Small Businesses chairman John Allan said: "The reality is that for small businesses in particular, extending paternity leave from two to four weeks makes it much more likely that they will have to buy in replacement staff as they will struggle with absences.

"That's a cost that some firms will struggle to afford."

Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg defended the Government's record, saying the Coalition had introduced shared parental leave for mothers and fathers.

He told Sky News: "To really encourage the take-up of paternal leave, we need to provide it on a 'use it or lose it' basis.

"There's a lot of change going on and I think it partly reflects that mums and dads these days want to take their own decision, not be told by the Government what time they should take off."


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PM Holds Talks Over Possible Greek Euro Exit

David Cameron has chaired a meeting to discuss the possible impact on the UK economy of Greece leaving the eurozone.

The Prime Minister met senior officials from the Treasury and Bank of England for an hour in the Cabinet room at No 10, amid ongoing speculation about the potential for Greece to default on its debts or drop out of the single currency.

They discussed various scenarios and the implications for for the UK.

Chancellor George Osborne did not attend the meeting as he was travelling to the G20 meeting of finance ministers and central bankers in Istanbul.

A government source said officials are keeping a close eye on events in Greece and want to make sure they have a clear idea of any British business exposure, according to Sky Political Correspondent Sophy Ridge.

Downing Street stressed that the overwhelming majority of Greek debt is held by eurozone institutions, not by Britain, and that reforms since the previous crisis in 2012 may have lessened the vulnerability of other European countries to a shock from Greece.

But Mr Cameron's official spokesman said: "There do remain risks around contagion and uncertainty and so it is important to look at all of those."

The possibility of a Greek exit from the single currency has loomed large since the height of the eurozone crisis and contingency plans were first prepared by the UK Treasury in 2011.

Investors have been particularly nervous about the possibility of Greece defaulting on its loans, given the new government's refusal to seek extensions.

Its demand for a cut to its obligations and the EU's refusal to negotiate has seen the country's 10-year debt yields - the interest rate Greece pays to service its debts - hit more than 11%.

The main stock market in Athens lost another 6% in morning trading on Monday, with banks worst hit.

Europe's major stock markets were as much as 2% down.


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Crunch Time Nears For Greece And Eurozone

It is approaching crunch time for the Greek government and the eurozone.

The reiteration on Sunday night by Alexis Tsipras, the new Greek Prime Minister, in his inaugural speech to parliament that his Syriza party will not seek an extension to Greece's bailout package has put him on a collision course with the "Troika" of the European Commission, European Central Bank and International Monetary Fund.

Mr Tsipras has said he wants Greece to be provided with a "bridging loan" once the current bailout package expires at the end of the month.

Without such a loan, or an extension to the current package, the Greek government looks likely to run out of money some time next month.

Yet Mr Tsipras himself has ruled out an extension to the existing bailout and Jeroen Dijsselbloem, head of the Eurogroup - the group of eurozone finance ministers - has ruled out a bridging loan, which explains why the UK government has drawn up contingency plans for a Greek exit from the eurozone.

A number of outcomes are now possible.

The first is that Greece backs down and that its current bailout is extended. This would be the least problematic course but would be deeply humiliating for the new Greek government.

The second is that the Greeks are granted the bridging loan they have requested.

This would be extremely difficult for Germany and other leading eurozone members to swallow because it would smack of caving in to Greek demands. It could lead to big votes for anti-austerity parties like Syriza elsewhere across the eurozone.

A third alternative is that Greece finds some money from somewhere else.

Russia has indicated that it is not averse to supporting Greece and President Putin would revel in another opportunity to meddle in the EU's affairs in view of European sanctions against Moscow following its conduct in Ukraine.

The problem here is that, following those sanctions, Russia's economy has collapsed into recession and, with the slump in oil and gas prices, its export earnings have fallen too.

It is scarcely in a position to provide Greece with much financial support.

That leaves a fourth alternative of Greece reneging on its debts, leaving the eurozone and reintroducing the drachma.

This was once seen as a nightmare scenario but is increasingly seen, especially within Germany, as a containable risk.

Yes, the Troika would lose the €240bn (£179bn) that it has shovelled into Greece to keep it afloat thus far, but most of those losses would reside with the IMF and the ECB itself rather than with individual banks.

Were the latter still major holders of Greek sovereign debt, it would be a different story, but there is less risk of contagion spreading across the rest of the eurozone now from a "Grexit".

Grexit would mean unimaginable pain for ordinary Greeks since the huge devaluation entailed by restoring the drachma would mean high inflation and, after having escaped from it, a return to recession.

Mr Tsipras knows this - and so a compromise of extending the existing bailout, perhaps using a form of words to disguise any kind of backing down on his part, is probably the way to bet.


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