UK Government ‘blackmailing offshore account holders’
Monday 14th April 2008, 2:30PM BST.
THE UK Government is blackmailing people with offshore bank accounts, according to a lawyer in Guernsey.
Paul Arditti, who has just joined Collas Day as a consultant, said using stolen evidence to prosecute tax dodgers was a crime in itself.
It emerged in Febuary that HM Revenue and Customs had paid an informant £100,000 for data of scores of wealthy Britons with offshore accounts.
‘I have no more sympathy for a tax dodger than anyone else, but I have even less sympathy for a government that’s supposed to be responsible for law and order but who breaks it,’ said Mr Arditti. ‘How can the UK Government prosecute someone when it itself has broken the law?’
- To read Guernsey Press stories in full, click here for subscription details. Individual editions are now available online.
Campaigns
Voice For Victims
Voice for Victims is a campaign aimed at promoting the rights of those affected by child sexual abuse.
This is Guernsey
Guernsey Press
This is what this government is about though…
Always bending the rules to suit, especially when it comes to tax and squeezing a little extra out of anyone they can.
Report abuse
It continually astounds me that the GP can print such one sided alarmist views and a real shame that it needs to take a somewhat stupid and poorly conceived publicity statement from a consultant looking for “a foot in the door” and sensationalise it in order to fill up page space.
The facts are that for those UK residents who are offshore account holders (not the far wider population of offshore account holders as implied in the article), if they have appropriately declared all of their income and paid all of their taxes as required by law this action by HMRC will not lead to any further tax liabilities for those people. It is not “squeezing a little extra out” as Jeremy might think.
As to thinking it is underhand, I suspect most people would be applauding their resourcefulness if they had done the same (as in fact many police forces throughout the world do) in order to track down a paedophile or drugs racket etc.
Report abuse