Richard Murphy: How is it tax evasion’s no longer a crime but demonstrating about tax avoidance is?

How is it tax evasion’s no longer a crime but demonstrating about tax avoidance is?


There’s a sickening dimension to today’s agreement between the UK and Switzerland that is getting to let thousands of wealthy tax criminals off the hook – without them ever being held to account or even having to admit to their crimes.

At the moment the UK government is turning this deliberate blind eye to massive, large scale, organised looting of the UK’s tax system it is also bringing criminal charges against more than thirty young people who recently took part in a in a wholly peaceful UK Uncut demonstration against tax avoidance.

They are facing criminal charges in the UK for having leaflets condemning tax avoiders when at exactly the same time the government was negotiating a deal to make sure that tax criminals were let off without ever facing the consequences of their crime.

This is a sickening indictment of the UK criminal justice system, our respect for free speech, the values of this government and the fact that we live in a society where it is now a crime to criticise the criminality that did and does pervade much of the financial services sector that deliberately promotes tax havens to facilitate crime of the sort which those using Switzerland have just been excused of.

No wonder people are angry.

They have every right to be.

We are being led by moral cowards who excuse crime whilst prosecuting those who exercise the supposed human right of free speech to criticise those facilitating it.

It’s Cameroon and Osborne who should be in the dock, not the Fortnum and Mason’s protesters from UK Uncut.

Richard Murphy.

From http://ht.ly/6bNfW.