Stephen Platt is an adjunct professor at Georgetown University; he also works with the World Bank and educates employees of the U.S. Department of Justice, the U.S. Treasury, numerous U.S. law enforcement agencies, Europol, and the Metropolitan Police on how criminals abuse financial services. In the past 20 years, he's sifted through thousands of files on money laundering, corrupt public officials, drug trafficking, and even terrorism and piracy to look at how illicit money moves through our financial institutions. His recent book Criminal Capital explains that our financial system is not just globally interconnected, but also inextricably linked to crime.
How dirty money gets into banks
Bit by bit, we have handed the capital over to pinstriped investors ‘reeking of lunch’. Are we resigned to a grey cloud of commerce, or can we reclaim a hopeful, collective future?
The city that privatised itself to death
Mr Osborne: Well, we have taken a much more aggressive approach. As a result, prosecutions are up fivefold. I have the following parliamentary answer from the then Chancellor, the right hon. Member for Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath (Mr Brown), and this is what he told the House:
“Where serious tax fraud has been committed, the Board”—
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the Inland Revenue board—
“may accept a money settlement instead of pursuing a criminal prosecution.
The Board will accept a money settlement and will not pursue a criminal prosecution, if the taxpayer, in response to being given a copy of this Statement by an authorised officer, makes a full and complete confession of all tax irregularities.”—[Official Report, 7 November 2002; Vol. 392, c. 784W.]
That was the approach of the right hon. Member for Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath to tax policy. [Interruption.]The shadow Chancellor says it was before 2000, but the revelations were made in 2009, and the last time I checked there was a Labour Government in late 2009 and early 2010.
UK debates about Corporate Tax Avoidance
