Financial Transparency Coalition

LONDON - Global Witness welcomes today's successful recovery by Libya of a £10 million London house, previously belonging to Colonel Gaddafi’s son, Saadi Gaddafi. The High Court in London ruled that the property, in the up-market London suburb of Hampstead, rightfully belongs to the Libyan state as it had been purchased with diverted Libyan state funds.

Yesterday ActionAid released a new report, detailing how tax changes being brought forward in the Budget could result in tax losses of £4 billion a year for poor countries and £1 billion for the UK. These changes will make it much easier for multinational companies to use tax havens to dodge their bills, particularly in the developing world.

Action Aid is right to highlight the problem with the UK’s reform of the so called ‘controlled foreign company rules’. I explained this issue for the TUC in June last year on pages 20 – 25 here. The abuse these changes in the rules will allow is real. The cost will be as big as Action Aid estimates. And that, in itself, simply adds to the tax abuse to the poorest countries of the world by the richest corporations in the world.

Gibralter proves that it's just more of the same.