Abuse Casts Shadow Over Second Island

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12:57pm UK, Wednesday March 05, 2008

A former resident of the care home at the centre of a major abuse investigation on the island of Jersey has claimed that attacks on children were rife on a second Channel Island.

Officers at Haut de la Garenne

Carl Denning stayed at the former children's home Haut de la Garenne on Jersey until he was 11 before being moved to two care centres on Guernsey.

Haut de la Garenne, dubbed "the house of horrors", is being investigated after more than 160 people claimed they were physically and sexually abused during the last 40 years.

Police excavating the site have also found a child's remains buried under a stairwell and a network of secret underground chambers where victims said they were kept in solitary confinement.

Mr Denning, of North Wales, claims that not only did he and other children suffer violent attacks while in care on Guernsey, but they were covered up.

He said: "There was definitely abuse going on in Guernsey, not to the same level as on Jersey but it was there.

"There was one bloke, he's dead now so he can't be brought to justice, he used to punch us and beat us. So did other staff.

"It wasn't sexual abuse but it was violent and there were other boys who suffered."

The 49-year-old, who is married and has four children, added: "No one would listen. I feel like the authorities really didn't believe what went on."

Guernsey police say Mr Denning has yet to report his claims to the police and that if he does then they will investigate.

Jersey police say they cannot comment on individual cases but they will investigate all claims of abuse. Protocol exists whereby neighbouring police forces share information.

A specialist military team is working at Haut de la Garenne using hi-tech radar equipment to search for more bodies.

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Suspects Are Establishment Figures

4:32pm UK, Friday February 29, 2008

Alex Watts, Sky News Online

Suspects in Jersey's child abuse scandal come from the very highest echelons of the tax haven's society.

Home at centre of abuse scandal

They include high-profile Government officials working at the time of the alleged sex attacks and torture at Haut de la Garenne care home.

Jersey news station Channel TV has revealed 13 names -but police would not confirm whether any of them were being interviewed as suspects or witnesses.

Lenny Harper, the Deputy Chief Officer of Jersey Police, would only say the 40 suspects in the scandal "come from all areas of island life".

He again stressed: "There is no evidence of any government cover-up."

But Sky News crime correspondent Martin Brunt said: "The question is how many are from high up in the Jersey establishment."

Jersey's former minister for health and social services, Senator Stuart Syvret, says there has been a "systemic failure in child care" on the island.

He has produced a "top-secret report" he claimed was evidence of senior government figures covering up sexual abuse at a school on the island.

Further details cannot be reported for legal reasons.

Mr Harper has said there are no plans to stop any suspects leaving the island.

But he added: "If they do leave the island then we will find them in due course."

The care home inquiry involves allegations dating back to the 1960s - with the majority of allegations taking place in the 1970s and 1980s.

Frank Walker, the island's Chief Minister, says no current government employees are the "subject of any police recommendation".

A couple who were employed at the home say they have "nothing to hide" and would help police with their inquiries.

Tony and Morag Jordan, now of Kirriemuir, in Angus, Scotland, worked as house parents at Haut de la Garenne from 1971 to 1984.

Notorious Jersey paedophile Edward Paisnel used to visit the home dressed as Father Christmas to give the children toys and sweets.

Paisnel, dubbed the Beast of Jersey, was jailed in 1971 after being convicted of 13 counts of assault, rape and sodomy. He died in 1994.

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Indian politicians pledge to recover tax haven ‘loot’

From The Times

April 30, 2009

Rhys Blakely in Mumbai

Illegal transfers of billions of dollars from India to Western tax havens have become a big issue after two weeks of campaigning in the country’s general election.

As calls increase worldwide for a crackdown on the illicit movement of capital, L. K. Advani, the leader of the main opposition Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), has vowed to repatriate as much as $1.5 trillion (£1 trillion), which he claims has been “looted” from India and moved overseas by corrupt officials, tax-shy members of the elite and leading companies over 60 years.

Mr Advani alleges that the money – worth more than the value of India’s economic output last year – lies in secret accounts in Switzerland and other countries. In a populist attempt to win votes in a month-long election that is at its midway point, he has vowed, if elected, to spend it on development. Opponents say that Mr Advani wildly overstates the amount salted away, and other observers say that his claims are feasible, but impossible to verify. Either way, however, India is only one of many countries losing patience with clandestine offshore jurisdictions.

In the firing line is the global “shadow economy”: the network of tax havens, disguised corporations, anonymous trust accounts and fake foundations that experts say allows “black money” – the proceeds of crime, government corruption and corporate tax evasion – to flow internationally. In the West, Angela Merkel, the German Chancellor, has led the battle against tax havens. Offshore account holders were put on notice last year when several countries, including Britain, began investigating accounts in Liechtenstein’s LGT bank after German intelligence services obtained a confidential client list. However, experts say that it is poor countries that lose most to the shadow economy, as capital outflows bleed development budgets, sap currency reserves and exaggerate income disparities, while corruption undermines commercial competition.

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Raymond Baker, the director of Global Financial Integrity (GFI), a Washington-based research group, says that about $1 trillion in black money is extracted from developing economies each year, mostly in the form of “commercial dirty money”.

He said: “This usually involves some bookkeeping fakery, by which imports and exports are listed incorrectly to mask their true values. The actual profits are then relocated to a tax haven.”

GFI estimates that between $22 billion and $27 billion was moved to tax havens from India every year from 2002 to 2006, 90 per cent of which will never return. An estimated 60 per cent was the result of corporate tax evasion. The rest came from government corruption and criminal activity.

According to GFI, for every $1 that poor nations receive in foreign aid, $10 flows illicitly abroad. The research group has suggested that terrorist groups and drug cartels are among the biggest beneficiaries.

Congress, the leading party in India’s coalition Government, admits that tax evasion is a problem, but claims that the BJP’s numbers are based on “bogus sources”.

The Swiss Bankers Association has said that the issue of tax havens has become “good election fodder”. It dismissed the numbers cited by BJP as “incredible”, but declined to provide its own.

Last week the Indian Supreme Court heard a petition demanding that the Government take steps to recoup money held in offshore accounts, the first petition its kind. The signatories, who included Ram Jethmalani, a former law minister, and K.P.S. Gill, a retired senior police official, alleged that no action had been taken so far because “influential politicians in most of the political parties are involved in the offences in question”.

This month the G20 summit in London agreed to police tax havens using a framework developed by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development. Experts say that the approach is flawed because it allows tax havens to judge for themselves when they should have to supply information on their clients.

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Luxembourg and Swiss - in tears about own Tax Fraud WorldNews.com

What would you say about a criminal who cries a river because of being attacked by their victims?

Very good trick: Moaning about injustice being done on them, when their injustice and missing ethics were the highest crimes, this planet has ever seen---

This scenario is exactly the case with Luxembourg and Switzerland.

Both have allowed Companies some tax evasion in trillions in Euros and Dollars for more than 50 years. They have opened their land in trillions for accounting fraud and tax tricks for almost all big societies on this Globe.

In addition, they had opened their frontiers to the richest VIP crooks of the world and allowed that their major part of Tax Charges in all countries be paid my Middle Class and Poor.

These egoists, only thinking of their own profits to the damage of all other nations, assisted by a multitude of banks and tax fraud models, serving alone those low IQ CEOs and fortune holders, representing the richest part of one percent of the world.

And now, when this highest crime of all times should be stopped, Luxembourg and Switzerland attack the Obama government, German minister Steinbrueck and all the tax authorities in all countries and any court that tries to bring order again in a world, where the richest companies and persons were allowed to build up their Parallel-World of Tax Freedom, to the benefit of some happy few, without any ethics.

And the folks of the rich junk were, without knowing it, helping Swiss, Luxembourg, City of London and Wall Street governments with their for tax fraud places, to maintain this world craziness in favour of happy Rich - for ever and ever.

Now, naturally, Luxembourg and the Swiss are not the sole criminals. We have others:

Singapore, Hong Kong, Liechtenstein, Monaco, Cayman, all Caribbean Islands, Panama, Jersey, Delaware, Florida, Macau, City of London, Orthodox New York, plus at least 50 other places, that were allowed by all Governments and Parliaments of the world, to grant all big companies, industry, services, banks, insurance, Wall Street investors, Hedge Funds and all the rest of mean idiots, the chance of hiding taxes, to the detriment of high-tax lands and in favour of the few crooks with their low-tax models of abzocking the world, in particular Middle Class and Poor all around the planet.

I think, we have enough now of criminal nonsense exceeding with accounting and tax fraud - by the factor of 10 - any other crimes in traffic with arms, drugs, dope, women and other Mafia activities.

Luxembourg and Switzerland, when will you learn to keep your god-damn mouths shut when again cheating - with so-called double taxation treaties, some tailor-made to guarantee your criminal activities for all times, the honest people, forced to finance the trillions of difference, in favour of unethical scrap who always possessed 90 percent of world fortune and a tax-free income out of it?

Rene Delavy, Berlin and Bournemouth

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German minister angers Luxembourg

Mr Steinbrueck's blunt language has riled other neighbours tooA diplomatic row has erupted between Germany and Luxembourg after a German minister compared Luxembourg's banking secrecy to practices in Burkina Faso. The Luxembourg parliament passed a unanimous resolution on Wednesday condemning the remarks by German Finance Minister Peer Steinbrueck. In March he offended Swiss politicians by comparing the campaign against tax havens to a Wild West cavalry charge. Burkina Faso, in West Africa, is not listed among the world's tax havens. Speaking in Brussels on Tuesday, Mr Steinbrueck referred to a Berlin conference on tax havens planned for next month, saying: "Naturally I'll invite them to the follow-up conference in Berlin: Luxembourg, Liechtenstein, Switzerland, Austria, Ouagadougou." The conference is under the auspices of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). Burkina Faso hits back Ouagadougou is the capital of Burkina Faso, whose ambassador to Germany, Xavier Niodogo, has also condemned Mr Steinbrueck's remarks. The Sueddeutsche Zeitung news website quoted Mr Niodogo as saying "our rules fully conform to international standards". "We object to Burkina Faso being named alongside alleged tax havens. We'll ask Mr Steinbrueck to explain why he mentioned Burkina Faso in this connection - and if necessary demand an apology," he said. Luxembourg's Foreign Minister Jean Asselborn said Mr Steinbrueck "really seems to have descended to the level of the beer hall". The parliament resolution called Mr Steinbrueck's words "an attack on the exemplary character of relations" between Germany and Luxembourg since World War II. For more than a year Germany has been especially outspoken about banking secrecy in some neighbouring countries - notably Liechtenstein, Luxembourg and Switzerland. The German government holds banks in such "tax havens" partly responsible for a shortfall in federal tax revenue, because they are used by some wealthy Germans. The economic crisis has fuelled Berlin's concern to replenish state coffers, amid a sharp rise in unemployment and expenditure on welfare benefits.

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Liechtenstein 'astonished' over latest German jab

The Associated Press

(AP) — VADUZ, Liechtenstein - Liechtenstein said Thursday it is "somewhat astonished" that German Finance Minister Peer Steinbrueck has renewed tax evasion allegations against the Alpine principality despite its offer of complete cooperation.

A government statement said Liechtenstein has been engaged for two months in "constructive discussions" with Germany over its offer to accept global anti-tax-haven standards and even to allow for taxation of German assets in Liechtenstein.

"Against the backdrop of these constructive talks so far, we are somewhat astonished by the accusations now leveled by Minister Steinbrueck that Liechtenstein is encouraging tax evasion," said Prime Minister Klaus Tschuetscher.

In Brussels earlier this week, Steinbrueck renewed his criticism of Liechtenstein and neighbor Switzerland for continuing to provide tax havens for wealthy Germans.

Steinbrueck flippantly compared Switzerland, Austria, Luxembourg and Liechtenstein with one of the world's poorest nations, Burkina Faso, because the four European nations had boycotted talks on tax evasion last year.

Liechtenstein said it was ready for formal negotiations to start soon with Germany.

But the country is concerned "about polemical accusations since they lead to lasting political damage that no one in Europe should be interested in causing," Tschuetscher said.

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Swiss ask US to drop UBS case

REUTERS , WASHINGTON 

Monday, Apr 27, 2009, Page 10

Switzerland, under pressure to join a global crackdown on tax fraud, asked the US on Saturday to drop a legal case involving UBS bank in return for a new tax accord the two countries are about to negotiate.

UBS agreed recently to pay a US$780 million fine and disclose the identity of about 300 of its US clients to avert criminal charges, but US authorities are still pursuing it, seeking to access the data of another 52,000 Americans they say are hiding about US$14.8 billion in assets in Swiss bank accounts.

Swiss President Hans-Rudolf Merz, whose country is famous for strict bank secrecy, told a news conference that US Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner seemed sympathetic to his call, put to Geithner at a meeting in Washington.

Bern and Washington start talks tomorrow on a new bilateral tax treaty and Merz said he hoped the negotiations would move swiftly.

Any such accord would need to be adopted by lawmakers in both countries, though, and perhaps put to referendum in Switzerland, where it could stumble if the US tax evasion case was still hanging over UBS, Merz said.

“I think Mr Geithner is conscious of the fact that these criminal procedures that are taking place in the United States could be an obstacle to the political process of the double taxation accords,” Merz said. “This is why I proposed that the criminal proceedings be withdrawn at the time of signing of such an accord.”

The US authorities arrested and charged an accountant in Florida on April 2 in the first of what they said could be a series of tax evasion prosecutions of American clients of UBS.

Merz said that this move, which came just as Switzerland had said it was ready to negotiate a new tax accord with Washington, had been “harmful to Switzerland and UBS.”

Merz said that on the sidelines of the IMF’s semi-annual meetings, Geithner promised to consider the Swiss request but could not reply immediately.

The US Treasury Department did not respond to a request for comment.

Under international pressure, Switzerland announced earlier this month that it would move toward internationally accepted standards of bank information disclosure in tax fraud cases.

Merz, who is also his country’s finance minister, said that renegotiation of tax accords with the US, Japan and Poland were already earmarked as priorities. Similar moves could also start with European countries. 

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