{"id":179189,"date":"2018-04-22T20:04:00","date_gmt":"2018-04-23T01:04:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2018\/04\/22\/tory-government-in-a-nut-shell\/"},"modified":"2018-04-22T20:04:00","modified_gmt":"2018-04-23T01:04:00","slug":"tory-government-in-a-nut-shell","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2018\/04\/22\/tory-government-in-a-nut-shell\/","title":{"rendered":"Tory Government in a Nut Shell"},"content":{"rendered":"

The UK Government refused to cooperate with a French money laundering investigation because the company being investigated was a major donor to the Conservative Party<\/a>:<\/p>\n

The British government refused to assist a French investigation into suspected money laundering and tax fraud by the UK telecoms giant Lycamobile \u2013 citing the fact that the company is the \u201cbiggest corporate donor to the Conservative party\u201d and gives money to a trust founded by Prince Charles.<\/p>\n

French prosecutors launched a major probe<\/a> into the firm and arrested 19 people accused of using its accounts to launder money from organised criminal networks two years ago, after BuzzFeed News revealed its suspicious financial activities<\/a> in the UK. But the Conservatives continued taking Lycamobile\u2019s money<\/a> \u2013 and it can now be revealed that the British authorities stonewalled a formal request from French prosecutors to carry out raids in London as part of the ongoing investigation.<\/p>\n

Confidential correspondence between British government officials and their French counterparts, shown to BuzzFeed News by a source in the UK, reveals that the French wanted British authorities to raid Lycamobile\u2019s London headquarters last year and seize evidence as part of their investigation into money laundering and tax fraud by the company.<\/p>\n

In an official response dated 30 March 2017, a government official noted that Lycamobile is \u201ca large multinational company\u201d with \u201cvast assets at their disposal\u201d and would be \u201cextremely unlikely to agree to having their premises searched\u201d.<\/p>\n

The letter, from the team at HMRC (Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs)<\/span> that handles law enforcement requests from foreign governments, continued: \u201cIt is of note that they are the biggest corporate donor to the Conservative party led by Prime Minister Theresa May and donated 1.25m Euros to the Prince Charles Trust in 2012.\u201d The email referred to Lycamobile’s donations to the British Asian Trust, which was founded by the Prince of Wales to tackle poverty in South Asia, not to his youth foundation The Prince’s Trust which has never received any money from Lycamobile.<\/p>\n

\u2026\u2026\u2026<\/p>\n

When BuzzFeed News first approached HMRC to ask about its response to the French request, the agency\u2019s senior press officer strongly denied that Lycamobile\u2019s donations would ever be cited as a reason not to conduct criminal raids. \u201cNo HMRC official would ever write such a letter,\u201d he said. \u201cThis is the United Kingdom for God\u2019s sake, not some third world banana republic where the organs of state are in hock to some sort of kleptocracy.\u201d<\/p>\n

However, after verifying the contents of the email seen by BuzzFeed News, another HMRC spokesman said that it was \u201cregrettable\u201d.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Translation, we regret that we have been caught.<\/p>\n

Lord (Ken) Macdonald, England\u2019s former director of public prosecutions, said the government\u2019s response to the French request for assistance represented \u201ca descent into banana republic law enforcement\u201d \u2013 and called on the UK authorities to cooperate fully with the investigation. \u201cIt would be beyond worrying if HMRC were to regard the payment of political donations as a shield against criminal investigation,\u201d he said. \u201cObviously the fact that a company may have the resources to challenge HMRC\u2019s actions in court is not a reason for authorities to back off. Otherwise, wealthy organisations would be beyond the reach of the law.\u201d<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Gee, you think?<\/p>\n

This is not a surprise.  The Tories and the Blairite New Labour have made financial corruption and money laundering the center (or centre) of their economic plans, and this is the inevitable result.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The UK Government refused to cooperate with a French money laundering investigation because the company being investigated was a major donor to the Conservative Party: The British government refused to assist a French investigation into suspected money laundering and tax fraud by the UK telecoms giant Lycamobile \u2013 citing the fact that the company is …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[368,371,439,444],"class_list":["post-179189","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","tag-corruption","tag-europe","tag-government","tag-international-finance"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/179189"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=179189"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/179189\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=179189"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=179189"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=179189"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}