Tax Dodgers?

A supporter of Workers Uniting Group sent this interesting item for the website.



"So just who are these upstanding business men who are so concerned about the nation’s economic recovery that they have taken such a principled stand against Gordon Brown’s proposed National Insurance contribution’s?

Well you certainly haven’t seen the full truth in the national media as to who they are.

However, “Private Eye” has done little digging and has come up with some useful information as to how their tax dodging has assisted the country’s economic situation.

In issue no: 1260 “Private Eye” makes the following claims.
“.... Sir Chris Gent led Vodafone when it acquired German phone company Mannesman through a tax avoidance scheme involving Luxembourg. It was intended to dodge billions in tax and is still being contested by HM Revenue & Customs. Now he chairs Glaxosmithkline which owns several of its most profitable brands offshore to avoid tax.
Paul Walsh employs similar tricks at drinks company Diageo, which last year announced plans to cut 900 jobs by closing its 180 year old Johnnie Walker plant in Kilmarnock, despite reporting profits of £2bn!

Property boss Jamie Ritblat of Delancey Estates is equally patriotic. He was one of the original backers of Mapeley when it took Britain’s tax offices offshore tto avoid tax – a move described by the Public Accounts Committee last week as “highly damaging” (Eyes passim ad nauseam).

The bosses of two companies that send their profits to tax haven-based owners, Matalan chief executive Alistair McGeorge and Virgin group boss Stephen Murphy, were also happy to advise on addressing the country’s fiscal dilemma. Robert Hiscox went one further not so long ago and re-located his Hiscox Insurance headquarters to Bermuda.

Big job-slashers not worried about the effect of National Insurance on jobs include Simon Blagden, chairman of Fujitsu Europe which as well as leaving the tax payer in the lurch on cocked-up IT contracts (Eyes passim) last year laid off 1,200 of its British employees.

Steel company Corus’s chief executive Kirby Adams also laid off 1,200 workers at Teesside just before Christmas.

Cameron clearly hoped to keep bankers off his list, but one crept in. Until 2008 Bob Wigley was chairman of Merrill Lynch , sub-prime investor par excellence and no small contributor to the economic mess he and his co-signatories are now exercised by! .....”

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