Some countries in the region can perhaps, do much worse than follow the lead which the United Kingdom has set in what now appears to be an all-out war against tax evaders.
These days, compulsive tax dodgers, smugglers and perpetrators of other questionable business practices designed to cheat the British Exchequer out of revenue have good reason to be increasingly wary of Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs Department (HMRC), which, it seems, is prepared to go to any lengths to ensure that the perpetrators of such crimes are brought to justice.
In December, and not for the first time, sections of the British media including the BBC, reported that, setting aside the heavy jail sentences reserved for “tax criminals,” the HMRC has taken the step of publishing the names and photographs of “tax criminals” who are currently at large in Europe having evaded hundreds of millions of pounds in taxes of one kind or another.
The BBC says HMRC, the authority to name and shame the individuals who have sought to avoid a minimum of £25,000 in taxes even if they have not been pursued in a criminal court while the publication of the pictures is intended to solicit the help of the public in catching the fraudsters.
The most recent batch of pictures published include VAT fraudsters, and gold, alcohol and cigarette smugglers.
The publication of photographs of tax dodgers is an incremental development in Britain’s long history of tough sanctions against tax evasion. Among the most recent batch of photographs published, tax evasion and VAT-related scams number among the major types of financial fraud in the UK. Earlier last year, the authorities published photographs of another group of 20 people who were believed to be responsible for £765 million in tax evasion and fraud.
