Financial Transparency Coalition

The ConDem government has announced a further development in its plan to turn the UK into a tax haven. As the FT reports this morning:

Multimillionaire foreigners prepared to invest their money in Britain will find it easier to make a home in the UK under government plans to relax immigration rules for the super-rich. The Home Office will shortly propose changes to “investor visas” to encourage more rich people to live and invest in the UK.

Under the plans:

As the Mail on Sunday reports yesterday:

When Barclays boss Bob Diamond confirmed that the bank had about 300 subsidiaries in tax havens there were gasps of dismay at a Treasury Select Committee hearing earlier this month. Few at the highly charged meeting would have believed such a vast network of offshore companies existed, potentially allowing the bank and its clients to avoid huge sums in tax. They would still be in the dark had MP Chuka Umunna not put the figure to Diamond in the first place. But a Financial Mail investigation can reveal that Barclays’ Byzantine structure is far...

It’s been argued – even to their shame by Labour politicians – that it’s inappropriate to target individual companies when protesting about tax avoidance. That’s wrong, for three reasons. First, the decision to tax avoid or not is that of the individual company. No one asks them to. Despite the claims made by some company directors and some apologists for this abuse, company directors are under no obligation to minimise their tax bills. Indeed, if doing so increases the risk within their companies it’s quite easy to argue that they’re acting against...

Yaoundé, Cameroon, sits at the heart of Central Africa. The region is rich with mineral and forestry wealth which has been exploited ruthlessly by colonial powers and powerful corporations for centuries. You need only read the short historical paragraph on Yaoundé's Wikipedia entry to get a sense of this past and present intrusion by external powers. Much of Central Africa's wealth disappears offshore, and constant exploitation has exposed the region to deep rooted political and commercial corruption. This is the context in which tax justice researchers and campaigners...