Hacker News Reader

Comment by branchless | Hacker News Reader

The London figure is always trotted out. All accounting is done through London. Also counting money like this doesn't count "wealth". A bunch of people creating new money as credit actually soaks up wealth as the rest of the UK is forced to exchange actual labour and products for fiat money against ever increasing land prices.

Tax havens aren't bastions of freedom. Load of rubbish. They are allowing massive inequalities and letting rogues plunder common wealth.

Did Abmramovich personally add billions in value? Or did he claim he, not the Russian people, "owned" much of Russia's oil and then washed a good part of it through London property?

View on HN

If a trafficker uses a mule to carry opium across the mountains, then sells the drugs and then sells the mule, is the new owner of the mule responsible for drug trafficking? Abramovich is Russian and the responsibility of the people running Russia. Likewise if the Maffia recycles money into legitimate assets in Italy then trades those assets in London, it's pretty rich for an Italian to try to pin that on London.

The article also talks about British overseas territories as though their laws are written in Westminster. They aren't. All these places make their own tax laws without any reference to the British government. Is this mentioned anywhere in the article? No, instead it's spun as though it's all a Westminster plot. Suppose Westminster did start imposing laws on these territories, would the Independent be applauding this as an example of responsible action or condemning it as an illegal and unconstitutional abrogation of Britain's responsibility to protect the independence of these territories? I think we have a right to know their opinion on that.

Of course Britain has a responsibility to fight crime and work with other governments to crack down on abuses, but we can't singlehandedly be the policemen for the whole world.

"Britain's responsibility to protect the independence of these territories"

Would this mean that the independence of "these territories" is dependent on Britain somehow? Quite an independence, heh? And now, Britain, the ultimate power that backs up the laws of the said territories can at the same claim to be absolved of whatever is happening under its protected domains? Astonishing, isn't it?

> Astonishing, isn't it?

Er, no. Everyone needs their independence to be protected. Just ask Tibetans, or Kuwaitis, or most of Europe. The fact is these offshore havens being nominally under British protection doesn't make one iota of difference to their tax laws or whether or not the businesses registered there do business with Britain. In fact Britain loses tax revenue just as much as anyone else, and has been working hard for decades to get these havens to tighten up their rules. But unfortunately annoying things like facts don't match the narrative this article is trying to spin

The state where nobody is responsible for anything and yet everyone is protected against everything is astonishing! ...at least to me.

> if the Maffia recycles money into legitimate assets in Italy then trades those assets in London, it's pretty rich for an Italian to try to pin that on London

It's not rich to criticise London if London is aware of or suspects that it's the Mafia they are dealing with and that the "legitimate" assets are simply laundered.

I also don't see why it's rich for an Italian to do the criticising. Perhaps you can explain that one.

If a bank has any reason to suspect that funds they are handling involve laundering they have very clear responsibilities to report them, and have strong incentives to do so as the watchdogs have real teeth.

It's rich because the police and banks in the UK can and do co-operate with the Italian authorities on criminal activities occurring in Italy, but at the end of the day the crime happened in Italy. Only someone with an axe to grind and predisposition against London would blame that on London.

So it's simply grinding an axe against London, and not that, according to the UK National Crime Agency, "hundreds of billions of US dollars of criminal money almost certainly continue to be laundered through UK banks, including their subsidiaries, each year”?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com