Britain is most corrupt country on Earth, says Mafia expert Roberto Saviano

[Bergslagstroll]

Interesting article about how tax havens is not only used by big business and rich individuals to avoid taxes but also by organized crime.

“Jersey and the Cayman’s are the access gates to criminal capital in Europe and the UK is the country that allows it. That is why it is important why it is so crucial for me to be here today and to talk to you because I want to tell you , this is about you, this is about your life, this is about your government.

“Leaving the EU means allowing this to take place. It means allowing the Qatari societies, the Mexican cartels, the Russia Mafia to gain even more power and HSBC has paid £2 billion Euros in fines to the US government, because it confessed that it had laundered money coming from the cartels and the Iranian companies. We have proof, we have evidence.”

Britain is most corrupt country on Earth, says Mafia expert Roberto Saviano

 

[shrubnose]

This is BS.

If you really believe this post some actual proof.

 

[donsutherland1]

Interesting article about how tax havens is not only used by big business and rich individuals to avoid taxes but also by organized crime.



Britain is most corrupt country on Earth, says Mafia expert Roberto Saviano

Whether or not this "expert" knows much about the Mafia is entirely a different matter from what he knows about countries and their political systems. It's evident that he knows very little about political systems, as the UK does not even begin to rival the corruption in parts of the Mideast, Central Asia, and Africa.

 

[OrphanSlug]

Too much of this is based on opinion, there is not some associated list of nations judged by a set of criteria saying "Britain is most corrupt."

It is an attention getting statement but without much fact to back it up.

 

[Infinite Chaos]

Interesting article about how tax havens is not only used by big business and rich individuals to avoid taxes but also by organized crime.

Britain is most corrupt country on Earth, says Mafia expert Roberto Saviano

I would argue there are different measures for corruption - having lived in both Nigeria and the UK, I can say the daily level of corruption on an everyday scale meaning ordinary people wouldn't do jobs they are paid for unless you added an extra "dashi" puts Nigeria and similar places on a whole level above anywhere in the west.
Then you can go right up to previous Presidents where people like Babangida, his wife and closest aids helped themselves to billions in US dollars from the oil revenues Nigeria produces. Down from that, Nigeria imports cheap nasty quality oil and exports some of the highest quality oil to the west and there are often huge petrol shortages in a country that is one of the largest oil producers in the world.

Experience of corruption in the UK is less common, I will probably say corporate crime and financial crime however is pretty common. Politicians and police agencies chase down benefits cheats more easily and commonly than they do tax evaders and the figures for benefits fraud are approx. £1.5 billion which is a molehill compared to at least £34 billion in tax evasion.

That is the figure the article writer is alluding to - funnily enough, he is living in the UK for safety from the Italian mafia as he probably wouldn't be safe under police protection in Italy.................

 

[PeteEU]

This is BS.

If you really believe this post some actual proof.

Actually there is some basis for it... maybe not "corrupt" but certainly hypocritical.

Why? Many of the biggest tax havens are British and tax havens are used by the mafia and like organisations to launder money and hide profits.

British politicians could be accused of being corrupt when they dont do anything about the tax havens under their control. Their excuse is of course "they are sovereign nations/areas", which is horse****. They are British Overseas Territories and they are all ultimately under the control of the British Parliament and Government.

So one has to ask, why these politicians are ignoring criminal activity within their borders and that is where the "corrupt" aspect can come into the picture. Everyone knows that billions if not trillions are funnelled through tax havens, and far from all that money is legit.

For example, I live 50 kms from one of these British tax havens, aka Gibraltar. All the big gambling companies are situated there, to avoid paying taxes of course, but also not to be compliant with gambling laws around the world... such as not being used to white wash money. Why? Because the local politicians who run the place are utterly corrupt. The police force there supports/protects massive smuggling rings and the governor of Gibraltar, who became very wealthy after he was elected, actually lives in his million euro mansion in.. Spain. So why does the British parliament not do anything about this criminal activity? It is not like they dont know.....

 

[shrubnose]

Actually there is some basis for it... maybe not "corrupt" but certainly hypocritical.

Why? Many of the biggest tax havens are British and tax havens are used by the mafia and like organisations to launder money and hide profits.

British politicians could be accused of being corrupt when they dont do anything about the tax havens under their control. Their excuse is of course "they are sovereign nations/areas", which is horse****. They are British Overseas Territories and they are all ultimately under the control of the British Parliament and Government.

So one has to ask, why these politicians are ignoring criminal activity within their borders and that is where the "corrupt" aspect can come into the picture. Everyone knows that billions if not trillions are funnelled through tax havens, and far from all that money is legit.

For example, I live 50 kms from one of these British tax havens, aka Gibraltar. All the big gambling companies are situated there, to avoid paying taxes of course, but also not to be compliant with gambling laws around the world... such as not being used to white wash money. Why? Because the local politicians who run the place are utterly corrupt. The police force there supports/protects massive smuggling rings and the governor of Gibraltar, who became very wealthy after he was elected, actually lives in his million euro mansion in.. Spain.

So why does the British parliament not do anything about this criminal activity?

It is not like they dont know.....

If you really want to know you should try asking them directly.

I very much doubt that they'll reply to your post here. You're just wasting your time.

:lol:

 

[Bergslagstroll]

Too much of this is based on opinion, there is not some associated list of nations judged by a set of criteria saying "Britain is most corrupt."

It is an attention getting statement but without much fact to back it up.

Yes but in this case you need to make attention getting statements. Because too little attention is one the tax havens that facilitates corruption and crimes.


That of course other countries have a lot more open corruption and crimes. But UK is amongst the top then it comes to the amount of dirty money that is washed and hidden. That money laundering through UK is more than many countries GDP.

Article about Roberto Saviano earlier warning that he backed up with NCA threath assesment. Also the bank that got a $1.9 billion dollar US fine for money laundering for the Mexican Sinaloa drugs cartel is not some odd shady bank but instead UK:s biggest bank.

His warning follows a National Crime Agency (NCA) threat assessment which stated: “We assess that hundreds of billions of US dollars of criminal money almost certainly continue to be laundered through UK banks, including their subsidiaries, each year.”

Last month, the NCA warned that despite the UK’s role in developing international standards to tackle money laundering, the continued extent of it amounts to a “strategic threat to the UK’s economy and reputation”. It added that the same money-laundering networks used by organised crime were being used by terrorists as well.

London is now the global money-laundering centre for the drug trade, says crime expert | Crime | News | The Independent

 

[OrphanSlug]

Yes but in this case you need to make attention getting statements. Because too little attention is one the tax havens that facilitates corruption and crimes.

That of course other countries have a lot more open corruption and crimes. But UK is amongst the top then it comes to the amount of dirty money that is washed and hidden. That money laundering through UK is more than many countries GDP.

Article about Roberto Saviano earlier warning that he backed up with NCA threath assesment. Also the bank that got a $1.9 billion dollar US fine for money laundering for the Mexican Sinaloa drugs cartel is not some odd shady bank but instead UK:s biggest bank.

London is now the global money-laundering centre for the drug trade, says crime expert | Crime | News | The Independent

You are saying the ends justify the means, and also excusing false reporting (commentary) just to bring attention to a subject.

There are better ways...

 

[Gaztopian]

I like how the French finance minister talked trash about Britain regarding tax evasion of major corporations when he said "unlike Britain, we uphold the law; there will be no deals with corporations guilty of tax fraud and tax evasion". Considering the horrendous deal Britain made with Google, I can see the claim in the OP being true.

 

[Bergslagstroll]

You are saying the ends justify the means, and also excusing false reporting (commentary) just to bring attention to a subject.

There are better ways...

It is correct that their are no official list of most corrupt countries there UK is on the top. Still Saviano have a great point is that then you discuse corruption you should not only focus only on the bureaucracy, the police and the politics, that you also have to look at the financial sector. There UK is more and more becoming the top money laundering country in the world. Thereby facilitating corruption and crimes all around the world.

It is also very intersting that citizen all around the world have been forced to give up both freedom and privacy after 9/11 and you even have a American presidential candidate that wants to ban all muslims from entering USA. That at the same time companies and wealthy individuals can continue hiding their wealth in tax havens, even if the same tax havens is used by criminals and terrorists.

 

[Ben K.]

Maybe a study based on some quantitative data is a bit more useful than some guys opinion?

Public integrity ranking: A new map of corruption in Europe | VoxEurop.eu: European news, cartoons and press reviews

Index of Public Integrity

 

[Bergslagstroll]

Maybe a study based on some quantitative data is a bit more useful than some guys opinion?

Public integrity ranking: A new map of corruption in Europe | VoxEurop.eu: European news, cartoons and press reviews

Index of Public Integrity

It seems like it is an index over factors and measures do avoid corruption in a country, but yes it is a correlation between that index and indexes that measures corruption directly.

Index of Public Integrity

That index and others like that still have some limitations like for example they only measures internal corruption. That you have countries like UK that according to most indexes have little internal corruption but at same time facilities crimes and corruption all around the world something those indexes don't take into account. That UK banks for example are laundering hundreds of billions of US dollars of criminal money, each year

Also why the UK government is still allowing this to happen is not probably open corruption but those grey area of influence that is not part of the official measurements of corruption.

For example, that banks and other business gives money to politicians’ campaign is something that is both legal and accepted not just in UK but most countries and it just happen to lead to less regulation of tax havens and ways to stop schemes to laundry and hide money.

Also something that common both in UK, USA and also my country Sweden is that politician and government official get lucrative carriers in the private sector after their time in government. So they have an incentive to make the “right decision” during their public career.

Also the financial sector brings a lot of jobs and growth to the local economy so the UK government have an incentive not to look to closely at the for example the fact that the banks are laundering hundreds of billions of US dollars each year.

That even of those grey areas are legal and even accepted they still can have a negative effect on society. For example, that criminals and corrupt politician and businessmen can easy hide they illegal money. Tax haven and schemes to hide money also leads to that ordinary citizens and small business have to pay more in taxes while big business and rich individual can avoid most of their taxes.