A political storm erupted today over allegations that High Street bank HSBC helped 7,000 rich Britons avoid millions of pounds in tax.
The bank offered secret “black” accounts in Geneva and offered wealthy clients advice on how to stay “one step ahead” of UK tax collectors, it was claimed.
The practice was exposed to the authorities in 2010 when a whistleblower passed stolen details of 30,000 accounts holding £78 billion, of which a quarter belonged to Britons, including actors, sports stars and criminals.
However, although £135 million in lost tax has since been clawed back by the UK from 3,600 Britons thought to have been avoiding tax, only one person has been prosecuted.
The claims, being aired on BBC 1’s Panorama tonight, triggered a furious blame game between politicians, bankers and HM Revenue & Customs.
Margaret Hodge, the chair of the powerful public accounts committee, highlighted the position of Lord Green, who ran HSBC during the period covered by the leaked accounts, and was later appointed trade minister by the Coalition government in 2010.
She said the peer, who stepped down as a minister in 2013 and is now ordained in the Church of England, faced “serious questions”. “Either he didn’t know and he was asleep at the wheel, or he did know and he was therefore involved in dodgy tax practices,” she said.
She lambasted Whitehall over the lack of prosecutions. “If it had been a benefit cheat, it would have been up for court years ago,” she added.
Treasury Minister David Gauke tried to shift the blame on to shadow chancellor Ed Balls, who faced “questions” because he was city minister before 2007, when the leaked accounts showed avoidance taking place. “What was he doing to deal with this type of behaviour and tax evasion?” he asked.
He said he “was not aware of any evidence” that Lord Green had been involved in any of the activity. “Clearly HSBC have got questions to answer,” he told Radio 4’s Today programme.
Ed Miliband said: “We need to know why HMRC apparently did not act, apart from at the margins, on the information that they seem to have been given about what was going on.”
