Oh, I am not talking about poor peoples crimes, for that there is more than adequate punishment and in some countries it results in a for profit penal system and slave labor. I am talking about rich peoples crimes, tax evasion and the associated money laundering. Apparently some folks think that these are not serious enough to warrant imprisoning folks.
HSBC is facing charges of fraud and money laundering from authorities in Belgium, who accuse the Swiss arm of Britain’s biggest bank of having helped wealthy customers evade tax.
For every doctor that is let go, for every hospital that closes for every delay in an operation how many people suffer unnecessarily or even die?
For every poorly maintained bridge, road and sidewalk, how many people are injured or die?
From the profits of the drug and arms trade how much death, destruction and brutality is caused?
How many terrorists are supplied with the tools of their trade?
Yet somehow some people have got into their heads that tax evasion and money laundering are victimless crimes and do not warrant punishment.
When greed nearly caused a complete global economic crash, where people were thrown out their homes, where whole populations are treated as pariahs, where social safety nets and services were wrecked, how many suffered? What did we do, we gave the architects of this crisis even more of our wealth. When some of us objected, arrests, kettling, beatings, pepper spray and mocking by the MSM followed.
Now a small amount of this corruption has become too big to ignore and some have found it worth reporting upon eight years after it was known:
HSBC is fighting an international firestorm over revelations that its Swiss private bank helped clients conceal undeclared accounts and provided services to criminals and corrupt businessmen.
Europe’s largest bank is facing renewed government scrutiny in the UK, Europe and the US after the Guardian and dozens of other media outlets published details from the biggest banking leak in history.
Some have even had an epiphany
Danny Alexander, the Liberal Democrat chief secretary to the Treasury, issued a strongly worded statement warning that tax cheats should be prosecuted in the same way as conventional criminals.
“Financial institutions who are proven to have colluded with tax evaders should have the full force of the law,” Alexander said.
“We quite rightly prosecute and often jail people guilty of damaging our society through conventional crime and antisocial behaviour. The way we treat systematic tax evasion should be no different. If that means jail for offenders and those that conspire with them, then so be it.”
Personally strongly worded statements make me go, meh.
Every Bank.
Every Financial Institution
Every Tax Haven
Needs to be fully audited.
Every crook needs to have their day in court.
Too much like hard work, hell my small business gets a full audit by the tax authorities every two or three years and yes they include our own private accounts. It may be a pain, but I have no problem with that. If I am one second overdue in paying, I get fined.
There are millions of people that have suffered from these financial crimes, bodies litter the ground. Money laundering assists terrorists, drug dealers and arm dealers around the world. Tax evasion is part and parcel of this blood soaked system. When revenues are not collected, hospitals close, education is underfunded and infrastructure fails. People are thrown out of work, their homes and their pensions disappear in a puff of smoke. Then we bail the architects of greed out of their mess.
Indignez vous!
There is no way in heaven or earth that HSBC is alone in this.