Skattasvindl: Trúverðugleiki stjórnarinnar í veði!

Engin lát verða á skattaundankomuumræðunni á næstu.  Viðtalið við Bjarna Ben í RUV um helgina og svo stórfrétt:  Skattasvindla peningamanna víða um heim.  Þar sem bankamenn hjálpa eignafólki að koma peningum undan skatti. 

1,3 milljarða skattaundanskot tengdust Íslandi
segir Kjarninn í dag og byggir frásögn sína af leka sem nokkrir sterkir fjölmiðlar og stofnanir stóðu að: 

The files – obtained through an international collaboration of news outlets, including the Guardian, the French daily Le Monde, BBC Panorama and the Washington-based International Consortium of Investigative Journalists – reveal that HSBC’s Swiss private bank:
• Routinely allowed clients to withdraw bricks of cash, often in foreign currencies of little use in Switzerland.
• Aggressively marketed schemes likely to enable wealthy clients to avoid European taxes.
• Colluded with some clients to conceal undeclared “black” accounts from their domestic tax authorities.
• Provided accounts to international criminals, corrupt businessmen and other high-risk individuals.
The HSBC files, which cover the period 2005-2007, amount to the biggest banking leak in history, shedding light on some 30,000 accounts holding almost $120bn (£78bn) of assets.

The revelations will amplify calls for crackdowns on offshore tax havens and stoke political arguments in the US, Britain and elsewhere in Europe where exchequers are seen to be fighting a losing battle against fleet-footed and wealthy individuals in the globalised world.
Approached by the Guardian, HSBC, the world’s second largest bank, has now admitted wrongdoing by its Swiss subsidiary. “We acknowledge and are accountable for past compliance and control failures,” the bank said in a statement. The Swiss arm, the statement said, had not been fully integrated into HSBC after its purchase in 1999, allowing “significantly lower” standards of compliance and due diligence to persist.
That response raises serious questions about oversight of the Swiss operation by the then senior executives of its parent company, HSBC Group, headquartered in London. It has now acknowledged that it was not until 2011 that action was taken to bring the Swiss bank into line. “HSBC was run in a more federated way than it is today and decisions were frequently taken at a country level,” the bank said.
HSBC was headed during the period covered in the files by Stephen Green – now Lord Green – who served as the global bank’s chief executive, then group chairman until 2010 when he left to become a trade minister in the House of Lords for David Cameron’s new government. He declined to comment when approached by the Guardian. (Guardian 9.2.2015)

HSBC er næst stærsti banki í heimi, með aðalbækistöðvar í London og 6600 starfsstöðvar í 88 ríkjum. Skattaundanskotin hafa verið stunduð í gegnum Svissneska hluta bankans og notuð bankaleynd Sviss til þess sem byggja á lögum frá 1934.  

Hér er vefur ICIJ um allt þetta mál.  Velkomin að kíkja inn!  Það verður gaman að sjá sýndarviðbrögð Fjármálaráðherra, sem virðist vera með allt niðrum sig. Trúverðugleiki ríkisstjórnarinnar í veði:  Eða hvað?