A data leak from a company based on the Channel Island of Jersey has shown the government's failure to tackle fraud in the tax haven, the Bureau of Investigative Journalism said on Monday following a new investigation
MOSCOW (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 05th October, 2020) A data leak from a company based on the Channel Island of Jersey has shown the government's failure to tackle fraud in the tax haven, the Bureau of Investigative Journalism said on Monday following a new investigation.
In partnership with European Investigative Collaborations, the bureau said that it had obtained 350,000 pages of internal records from the La Hougue group, which provided advice for companies that sought to minimize their tax burden in the United Kingdom until 2007, when the group moved its trusts to Panama.
According to the bureau, the La Hougue group was run on the island of Jersey from the home of John Dick, a businessman raised in Canada. La Hougue stands accused of helping a Canadian company organize a false bankruptcy to escape a $7.5 million tax bill.
"In my view, Jersey's authorities have shown quite clearly that they don't come near to regulating their finance industry properly and therefore could have facilitated not just aggressive tax avoidance, but tax evasion and money laundering too," former Labour minister Margaret Hodge told the bureau.
The lawyers of John Dick told the Bureau of Investigative Journalism that the accusations are false and that Dick himself was the victim, rather than the perpetrator of fraud.
"John Dick, members of his family and many clients of La Hougue are victims of fraud and criminal conduct carried out over many years. John Dick refutes entirely any suggestion of wrong-doing. John Dick is a victim, not the perpetrator," the businessman's lawyers were quoted by the bureau as saying.
Jersey has long been a popular offshore hub for global finance due to its 0 percent corporate income tax rates and low rates of income tax. The Corporate Tax Haven Index 2019 rated Jersey as the world's seventh-most aggressive tax haven.
