SIMPLE CRIMINALITY

For most people a crime is a crime and if you got caught you tended to do the time or take the punishment. If the vast majority of us fiddled our expenses, we would be prosecuted, lose our jobs and perhaps (depending on the scale of the fiddle) go to prison. Likewise helping yourself to a bottle of water after a riot can get you 30 days in prison, yet misselling members of the public around £ 3.9 billion pounds worth of PPI results in no real punishment for the people responsible.

Bob Diamond’s partial use of the Nuremberg defence, whereby there was no real problem with fiddling the Libour rate, because he had told someone in the Treasury what was going on, may not work in court because merely informing a superior of criminal acts committed or about to be committed is no excuse for committing the criminal act. The banks aside for a moment, if most of us don’t pay our council or road tax we get prosecuted (and our cars get crushed into the bargain) yet tax evasion largely goes unpunished.

Tax evasion may be costing the UK exchequer some £64 billion pounds a year, the equivalent of £1,000 pound per person within the UK. The shadow economy also hits the exchequer hard and indirectly affects every one of us in the wallet. Non declared income, tax loopholes, simple avoidance or off the books economic activity within the shadow economy adds up to tax free economic activity to the tune of £ 160 billion pounds a year. This is around 10.5% of the UK’s GDP, and is ironically somewhat large than the UK’s deficit which sits at around 8.3% of the UK’s GDP.

Tax Research UK, estimates that this shadow economic activity means that the Exchequer loses out to the tune of £64 billion pounds per year, this is some 16 times larger than the £ 4 billion pounds that the UK Government estimates its misses out on due to tax evasion. That is roughly about £1 pound out of every £8 in the economy. Yet the Con Dem Government in its ideologically driven reckless slash and cut approach to the public sector has reduced the number of staff in Revenue and Customs from around 100,000 to 65,000 and plans to reduce the numbers to around 50,000 by 2015 – talk about a no brainer!

Mind to expect the Tories to seriously tackle tax evasion, is a bit like expecting New Labour to stand up to the Trade Unions or both of them to have an honest debate about Party funding. The UK Government is heavily involved in aiding and abetting tax evasion worldwide, British Overseas territories, including the Cayman Islands, help to hide some £ 1.6 trillion pounds from the different nation’s tax authorities. So it should be little wonder that some of the city banks are hand in glove with drug dealers, dictators and terrorists when it comes to money laundering.

NOT ABOVE THE LAW?

No one should above the law, be they politicians, bankers or the rest of us. The latest blatant illegality on the part of the banks should result in a criminal investigation into affairs at Barclays (the bank was fined £290m for manipulating LIBOR interest rates between 2005 and 2009). This latest criminal act is a direct result of the financial crisis and its lack of legal consequences, the banks (and the bankers) have got away with it in recent years. Where guilt and criminal intent can be established then those responsible should be charged for their crimes.

The banking sector has developed a culture of entitlement, with its something for nothing operating culture. The Financial Services Authority (FSA) has now established that there was systematic abuse and manipulation of interest rates in Barclays’ favour. Any individuals who illegally claim benefit or try to manipulate the system to their benefit run the risk of criminal convictions and prison terms – so why not the bankers who have rigged the market to the tune of billions of pounds? Since when has it been acceptable for a to be fined £290m and the only sanction is to offer to give up your bonus.

It is no more acceptable for the rich people to scam money than anyone else. Such behaviour might be acceptable under a New Labour or a Conservative Government but it is not acceptable to the rest of us. It is worth remembering that much of the illegality took place under the last Labour government, when Ed Balls and Ed Miliband and the rest of them were ‘relaxed’ about people becoming filthy rich.

There is little difference between New Labour and the Conservatives when it comes to their fawning attitude towards the mega-rich in the finance sector and it was their ‘light-touch’ (near nonexistent) regulation which helped City money men rake it in at our expense. The scandals over MPs expenses, newspaper phone hacking and the economic collapse all broke when New Labour were running the shop.

The Con –Dems and New Labour have been happy to stand up for the mega-rich and have cared little for the ordinary citizen. Resignations (and no doubt ‘golden parachutes’) are not acceptable; there have to be some real lasting consequences. So enough off the court of public opinion it’s time for some appearances in the law courts!