Billions Of Tax Lost In The UK Through Avoidance, Fraud And Shifted To Tax Havens

Government Pandemic Committee Was Scrapped Six Months Before Covid.
Boris Johnson scrapped the government’s Threats, Hazards, Resilience and Contingency Committee (THRCC) six months before the coronavirus arrived in Britain so they could focus on Brexit.
The ‘anti-pandemic committee’, which included senior ministers such as Michael Gove, Matt Hancock and Gavin Williamson, was scrapped before having an opportunity to discuss Covid-19.
The THRCC – a sub-committee of the National Security Council – was intended to ensure the UK was ready to deal with a pandemic.
But outgoing cabinet secretary Mark Sedwill advised Downing Street that the committee should be wound down to dedicate the resource to dealing with a no-deal Brexit, which was scheduled for October 31, 2019.
When Johnson arrived at Number 10 in July 2019 he vowed to streamline Whitehall, abolishing the team following the advice, allowing Brexit to be the focus six months before the pandemic broke out.
( Jonathon Read, 29.06.2020 )  ..  theneweuropean.co.uk

Ukranian Forces Used Cluster Munitions.
Human Rights Watch said the Ukrainian government forces used cluster munitions in populated areas in Donetsk city in early October 2014.
The use of cluster munitions in populated areas violates the laws of war due to the indiscriminate nature of the weapon and may amount to war crimes.
During a week-long investigation in eastern Ukraine, Human Rights Watch documented widespread use of cluster munitions in fighting between government forces and pro-Russian rebels in more than a dozen urban and rural locations.
While it was not possible to conclusively determine responsibility for many of the attacks, the evidence points to Ukrainian government forces’ responsibility for several cluster munition attacks on Donetsk.
An employee of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) was killed on October 2 in an attack on Donetsk that included use of cluster munition rockets.
( Human Rights Watch, 20.10.2014 )  ..  hrw.org

Palestinian Boy Says He Was Raped By Israeli Interrogator.
An Israeli interrogator raped a Palestinian child detainee in prison, he told Defense for Children International Palestine (DCIP).
The 15-year-old boy, whose identity is known to DCIP but withheld for privacy reasons, gave his testimony to the human rights group.
Israel had placed the boy under house arrest in November 2020.
Israeli occupation forces then took him from his home in the occupied East Jerusalem neighbourhood of Issawiyeh in the middle of the night on 13 January 2021.
Israeli forces then took the child to the Russian Compound interrogation and torture facility in Jerusalem, where he was handcuffed and blindfolded in a hallway and attacked by passersby.
“Every two to three minutes, someone would come by and slap, push, punch or kick me,” the boy told DCIP.
He said he was then taken to a room where he was interrogated by a man who identified himself as Captain Kamel.
“He kicked me and punched me while shouting and saying I should tell him what I did,” the boy recalled.
He was accused of throwing stones and Molotov cocktails.
“Whenever I told him I did not do anything, he would beat me harder. He threatened to shock me with electricity, but I told him I did not do anything.”
The boy said that the same individual “knocked him to the floor while blindfolded and raped him with an object,” according to DCIP.
The individual threatened to continue with the sexual violence until the boy confessed.
The boy said the individual then pressed him against the wall and inflicted intense pain on his genitals.
While the boy’s testimony is shocking, in recent years there have been consistent reports of sexual threats and violence against Palestinian children and adults by Israeli interrogators.
( Tamara Nassar, 19.02.2021 )  ..  electronicintifada.net

Foreign Royals And Billionaire Tax Exiles Have Claimed Millions In Taxpayer-Funded Furlough Money.
Beneficiaries behind companies that have drawn on the coronavirus job retention scheme include:
Members of the Saudi royal family.
Qataris behind Harrods and the Ritz Hotel.
The ruler of Dubai.
Tax exiles Jim Ratcliffe and Guy Hands.
Billionaires Evgeny Lebedev, Len Blavatnik and Mohamed Al Fayed.
The British National party.
Tony and Cherie Blair.
Golf courses owned by Donald Trump.
The government first published information about claimants last month, when it released data on the 750,000 businesses using the scheme in December 2020.
Two businesses owned by Lord Ashcroft, the multi-millionaire Tory donor and former Conservative party chairman, claimed £20,000.
A subsidiary of Arconic, the manufacturer of cladding used on Grenfell Tower, claimed up to £500,000.
The revelations, based on analysis of government information, have sparked dismay among MPs at the use of a scheme designed to support struggling businesses and prevent mass unemployment, with one complaining of public money being scattered “like confetti”.
( Rob Davies and Joseph Smith, 19.03.2021 )  ..  theguardian.com

Oligarchs Dominate The Economy In Ukraine.
Ukraine’s oligarchs are a small group of super-rich businessmen who dominate the country’s economic and political life.
Most got rich in the 1990s by buying state assets cheaply as they were privatised.
Overnight the men became owners of lucrative monopolies.
The oligarchs’ well-funded tentacles now reach deep into Ukrainian society.
Many have their own political parties, and supportive television stations.
Some also have judges and senior civil servants ready to do their bidding if the need arises.
“Nowhere in Emerging Europe, where countries have adopted the Westernising approach, are oligarchs as dominant as in Ukraine,” says Timothy Ash, a strategist for Bluebay Asset Management. “Sure, you have a few, but they do not absolutely dominate the economy as in Ukraine.”
In March 2021, Ihor Kolomoisky, a billionaire who once had business ties with Ukrainian President Zelensky, was “designated” by the United States, with Kyiv’s blessing, for involvement in “significant corruption”.
He and his immediate family are barred from entering the U.S.
( Jonah Fisher, 21.05.2021 )  ..  bbc.co.uk

Former Russian Minister’s Wife Is A Tory Donor.
Major political donors to the Conservative Party have invested in properties through offshore companies.
Lubov Chernukhin has given more than £1.8million to the party since 2012.
The Pandora Papers leak revealed the scale of the secret offshore wealth she shares with her husband, a former Russian minister.
It includes a house near Regent’s Park in London now worth about £38million, and a mansion in Oxfordshire bought for £10million.
The properties were secretly acquired through a network of offshore companies.
Russian businessman Victor Fedotov’s companies have given £900,000 to MPs.
He purchased a Hampshire manor house through a network of offshore companies.
Files in the Pandora Papers suggest he made millions from a project that became mired in allegations of corruption.

‘Dark Money’ In British Politics.
The Conservative Party has accepted £2.6million in donations from ‘shadowy’ groups with anonymous funders since Boris Johnson became prime minister.
An analysis by openDemocracy also reveals that more than £800,000 of this was given directly to individual Tory MPs and their local parties, mostly in marginal ‘Red Wall’ seats.
openDemocracy found that British political parties have reported donations worth £12.9million through unincorporated associations in the past five years.
£4.1million of this has been declared since Boris Johnson became prime minister in July 2019, with the majority going to his party.
Most unincorporated associations are innocuous groups, such as small local fundraisers or councillors banding together to pay for staff.
But these structures have also been used to funnel large sums of ‘dark money’ in British politics.
The Democratic Unionist Party’s record-breaking £435,000 Brexit donation came through an unincorporated association called the Constitutional Research Council.
The source of this money has never been revealed.
( Seth Thévoz, Martin Williams & Peter Geoghegan, 08.07.2021 )..  opendemocracy.net

Billions Of Tax Lost In The UK Through Avoidance, Fraud And Shifted To Tax Havens.
The amount of tax lost in Britain through non-payment, avoidance and fraud has increased to £35billion, according to official figures.
HM Revenue and Customs said the tax gap – the difference between the expected income for the exchequer and actual receipts – was estimated to have jumped by about £2billion in the 2019-20 financial year from the period a year earlier.
It said the figure represented a 5.3% shortfall of theoretical tax liabilities due, compared with 5% in 2018-19.
Campaigners said the amount of tax lost to fraud, based on the HMRC figures, was at least £15.2billion, but that billions of pounds more were likely to have been shifted away from the UK to tax havens by multinational companies.
( Richard Partington, 16.09.2021 )  ..  theguardian.com

U.S. Officials Gave The Taliban A List Of Americans And Afghan Allies.
U.S. officials in Kabul gave the Taliban a list of names of American citizens, green card holders and Afghan allies to grant entry into the militant-controlled outer perimeter of the city’s airport, a choice that’s prompted outrage behind the scenes from lawmakers and military officials.
The move, detailed to POLITICO by three U.S. and congressional officials, was designed to expedite the evacuation of tens of thousands of people from Afghanistan as chaos erupted in Afghanistan’s capital city after the Taliban seized control of the country.
Since the fall of Kabul in mid-August, nearly 100,000 people have been evacuated, most of whom had to pass through the Taliban’s many checkpoints.
But the decision to provide specific names to the Taliban, which has a history of brutally murdering Afghans who collaborated with the U.S. and other coalition forces during the conflict, has angered lawmakers and military officials.
“Basically, they just put all those Afghans on a kill list,” said one defence official.
( Lara Seligman, Alexander Ward and Andrew Desiderio, 26.08.2021 )  ..  politico.com

UK Is “Balancing The Books” While Yemenis Starve.
Britain’s halving of aid to Yemen is a bid to ‘balance the books on the backs of starving people’, the head of the UN humanitarian affairs office has claimed.
The UK will lose global standing for the sake of a ‘relatively small’ sum, said Briton Sir Mark Lowcock, ex-boss of the department for international development.
The reduction from £160million to £87million will lead to tens of thousands of deaths, he added.
Boris Johnson has said the cut was necessary in the ‘straitened circumstances’ of the pandemic.
( Metro, 09.03.2021 )

Donations To The Tory Party From People Linked To Russia.
UK Northern Ireland Secretary Brandon Lewis was listed as receiving £25,000 from long-time Tory donor Lubov Chernukhin, the wife of one of Vladimir Putin’s former ministers, and £23,000 from Alexander Temerko, a former chief of a Russian arms company, The Times newspaper reported.
It also emerged that 14 Tory ministers and two members of the Intelligence and Security Committee, which published a long-delayed report into Russian interference in British democracy, had taken money from figures linked to Russia.
The donations, which are legal and had been properly declared, emerged as the ISC’s Russia report raised concerns about an influx of Russian money into the UK since the 1990s.
Other senior Tories who received personal donations or money for their local constituencies from the two donors include Chancellor Rishi Sunak, Business Secretary Alok Sharma and Justice Secretary Robert Buckland.
Tory MPs Theresa Villiers and Mark Pritchard- both members of the ISC – also received donations to their constituency branches from Mrs Chernukhin and Mr Temerko.
( Lizzy Buchan, 23.07. 2020 )

Corruption In Ukraine?
Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy was elected in 2019 on the promise of wide-reaching reforms to battle corruption and improve the economy.
Former prime minister Oleksiy Honcharuk was fired in March 2020 along with several of his ministers, the Ukrainian prosecutor general, Ruslan Riaboshapka, and other officials.
Honcharuk and Riaboshapka, who were well-regarded in the West, have since expressed their concern about the direction of Ukraine, where they feel the malign influence of powerful people on the country’s economy is growing.
Anders Aslund, an economist and senior fellow at the Atlantic Council, said: “Since early March, when Zelenskyy changed the government for no apparent reason with unknown people, there has been no direction in the government. We have seen that Zelenskyy’s new people have undone everything that was done before. It seems for me that it is done to restore corruption and oligarchs seem to influence this development. Everything is getting destroyed. The hope for a better future which prevailed when Zelenskyy was elected has gone.”
At the beginning of July 2020, the governor of the National Bank of Ukraine, Yakiv Smolii, handed in his resignation because of ‘systematic political pressure’.
The International Monetary Fund (IMF) recently provided Ukraine with a $5billion loan to battle COVID-19, but noted in a report that “reforms increasingly faced resistance from vested interests”, and court rulings were undermining reform progress “especially in tackling corruption and financial sector reforms”.
( Emil Filtenborg and Stefan Weichert, 25.07.2020 )  ..  euronews.com