Published on 23 February 2015, by M. Tomazy.
The banking giant HSBC is today accused by a former Director of Public Prosecutions of engaging in “a systematic and profitable collusion in serious criminal activity”.
In a damming intervention Lord Ken Macdonald, who led the Crown Prosecution Service until 2008, said there existed “credible evidence” of HSBC’s involvement in “grave” cross border crimes that should have been the subject of urgent and “sustained criminal investigation” in the UK.
Lord Macdonald added that a decision by Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs not to investigate HSBC for its role in facilitating possible tax evasion was “seriously legally flawed”.
Lord Macdonald’s intervention will increase the pressure both on the bank, which reports its full year results today, and HMRC. It comes as the Liberal Democrat Chief Secretary to the Treasury Danny Alexander called for new laws to be introduced to crack down on tax evasion before the next election.
Until now HMRC has claimed it received the details of accounts held by clients of HSBC Suisse under strict international treaty conditions, which it said, limited their use of the data to only to pursuing tax offences.
Source: The Independent
In a damming intervention Lord Ken Macdonald, who led the Crown Prosecution Service until 2008, said there existed “credible evidence” of HSBC’s involvement in “grave” cross border crimes that should have been the subject of urgent and “sustained criminal investigation” in the UK.Lord Macdonald added that a decision by Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs not to investigate HSBC for its role in facilitating possible tax evasion was “seriously legally flawed”.
Lord Macdonald’s intervention will increase the pressure both on the bank, which reports its full year results today, and HMRC. It comes as the Liberal Democrat Chief Secretary to the Treasury Danny Alexander called for new laws to be introduced to crack down on tax evasion before the next election.
Until now HMRC has claimed it received the details of accounts held by clients of HSBC Suisse under strict international treaty conditions, which it said, limited their use of the data to only to pursuing tax offences.
Source: The Independent
