Who will stand up to the bully boys and hypocrites

It was only a couple of weeks ago that I suggested it might be just a shade presumptuous to crack a couple or three bottles of Veuve Clicquot Champagne just yet, never mind putting down the deposit on a new Porsche in anticipation of yet another big bonus.

Sure enough, scarcely has there been time for the bubbles to go flat, and someone in Downing Street to lick a first class stamp, than we’ve got little Terry Le Sueur having his cage well and truly rattled – and all this within about a month of arriving back from tea and biscuits with a Treasury minion, clutching a bit of paper inferring peace in our time.

I hate saying this because I’ve got a fair amount of time for the Beeches Old Boy, but where on earth are we going to find someone with enough bottle to stand up to these bullying tactics?

Not satisfied with pressurising this small rock, almost ever since the first non-clearing bank was set up here, about harbouring tax evaders – that’s people who break the law – until we sign up to heaven knows how many reciprocal agreements, Brown & Co are now oiling the thumbscrews to ensure our compliance over tax avoidance, something which is actually lawful.

Let me give Mr Brown an example, because he clearly doesn’t seem to understand how it works. In the last year for which figures were published, and in addition to his salary for being an MP, Prime Minister, First Lord of the Treasury and Minister for the Civil Service, Mr Brown also drew expenses and/or allowances for things like postage, employing staff, running an office, stationary and postage and staying away from his main home.

These payments to him totalled in excess of £111,000 and I doubt very much whether he paid tax on all, or even any of it, and nor should he because much of what he was paid (for staff and office running costs, for example) is quite legitimately tax deductable.

That, for his information, is called tax avoidance and quite why he somehow thinks it legitimate for him, but not for us, is usually defined by simple country boys like me as the politics of envy.

Of course, he won’t take any notice of me, and the bunch of headless chickens which often masquerades as our Council of Ministers won’t have the guts to tell him. Oh, for another Dick Shenton, who once famously told a Home Office Minister who put his watch on the table at the start of a meeting that, if he was pushed for time, the Jersey delegation would return on another day, but they wanted matters sorted out at one meeting: Shenton 1, Home Office 0.

However, there is something that they may just have the courage to raise and I’m extremely grateful to the reader who drew it to my attention after he read my ‘not holding my breath’ comment two weeks ago.

It is an article in The Economist headlined ‘Haven Hypocrisy’ and it concerns the researches of political scientist Jason Sharman, of Australia’s Griffith University. With a budget of $10,000, he showed how easy it is to circumvent prohibitions on banking secrecy, forming anonymous shell companies and secret bank accounts across the world.

As the article states, in doing so Mr Sharman has uncovered an uncomfortable truth for many of the leaders of the G20 nations, for the most egregious examples of banking secrecy, money laundering and tax fraud are found not in remote alpine valleys or sunny tropical isles, but in the backyards of the world’s biggest economies.

Mr Sharman says that at issue is not the traditional form of banking secrecy, as the Swiss once practised it, but a more insidious form in which authorities and bankers don’t bother to ask for names, something long outlawed in offshore tax centres, but which has persisted in America.

But the US was not the only rich nation Mr Sharman tested. He tried to open anonymous shell companies and bank accounts 45 times around the world and in 17 cases, 13 of which were OECD, the crowd telling us what to do, he was successful.

One example was Britain, where in 45 minutes on the internet he formed a company without providing identification, was issued with bearer shares, a practice almost universally outlawed because they confer completely anonymous ownership, as well as nominee directors and a secretary, all for the princely sum of £515.95.

Mr Sharman concludes: ‘In practice, OECD countries have much laxer regulation on shell corporations than classic tax havens and the United States is the worst on this score; worse than Liechtenstein and worse than Somalia.’

Now Senators Le Sueur, Ozouf and the rest of you, who’s going to pin that article to Mr Brown’s letter and tell him that’s our response? As I said a fortnight ago, I’m not holding my breath.

And finally…apparently, Jim-my Perchard has done the decent and honourable thing and resigned as Health Minister. Actually, he’s done no such thing; he’s seen the writing on the wall, counted heads and jumped before he was ignominiously pushed.

The decent thing would have been an immediate resignation and an unqualified apology to those he insulted, including Stuart Syvret. If others believe Senator Syvret should also be dealt with because of his vile blog then so be it, but don’t link the two, because two wrongs will never make a right.