Comment by sprafa | Hacker News Reader

Comment by sprafa | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

The Channel Islands, Gibraltar and the Isle Of Man I believe are constantly being used for the purpose of tax evasion, money laundering etc... that’s what frightens me about Brexit - I think the hard Brexiteers actually want to make this easier, not harder.

I.e. I met a software guy from Sachs who told me about what he did there. Essentially he built automated software to flag “suspicious transactions”. So ie if 200 million came in from he Faroe Islands the software would flag it as “possibly” an unlawful transfer. It made sure the books were “kosher”.

So I asked him

Me: oh ok, so then the software blocked those transactions?

Him: no.

Me: Well did it flag them so they would investigate it?

Him: no.

Me: What did it do then?

Him: It just flagged them.

Me: just flagged them? ... so what did it do? What was it for?

Him: It was designed so when the Sachs managing team are called to court they can say “oh yeah we’re very sorry our software flagged that as a suspicious activity. We’re really sorry, won’t happen again”. And then they’ll get a 200 million fine on a 3 billion operation. By law they don’t have to do anything else, so they don’t.

> The Channel Islands, Gibraltar and the Isle Of Man I believe are constantly being used for the purpose of tax evasion, money laundering etc... that’s what frightens me about Brexit - I think the hard Brexiteers actually want to make this easier, not harder.

It's the one single thing that makes me most pro-EU. I don't see how we can fight tax evasion on a country-by-country level. But a economic and geographical bloc as big as the EU has enough clout to have real enforcement power.

I am not even sure one can fight tax evasion as the EU as a whole without giving the EU a tax surveillance authority none of the member states want to give it. It's the same thing as a EU-wide immigration issue. Given the EU border powers over all Schengen states? Or just accept that this is going to be contentious forever? The EU is geared towards the latter which is not on the whole a bad thing.

But a economic and geographical bloc as big as the EU has enough clout to have real enforcement power.

The EU gave us the double-Irish and the Dutch-sandwich and other tax evasion schemes used by large corporations. They want the exact opposite of “real enforcement power”.

The EU didn’t do that, states did that.

And if I’m not mistaken part of the reason why it went away was the EU kept giving them advice to stop it.

The EU requires member countries to let money cross their borders, and grants corporations the right to pay taxes for the entire EU in the member country of their choosing.

So a positive thing about Brexit would be that it makes it easier to declare war on the Faroe islands... Only need to fend off the British not all Europeans.

I'm afraid the Faroe Islands is an autonomous region within Denmark, not Britain.

And the Faeroes have never been part of the EU or Schengen. But being part of Denmark for defense purposes, I think they are in NATO.

NATO is mostly a fiction at this point.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com