Author Topic: New Tax Evasion Scandal - in Germany!  (Read 4285 times)

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Offline TonyKath

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New Tax Evasion Scandal - in Germany!
« on: Friday, 14 March, 2014 @ 20:07:28 »
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Uli Hoeness sentenced to three-and-a-half years in jail for tax evasionOn Tuesday, Uli Hoeness cheered his club from the stands as they progressed to the next round in the Champions League against Arsenal. on Thursday, the former Germany international and president of Bayern Munich sat in silence as a judge sentenced him to three and a half years in jail for tax fraud calculated to have cost the state more than €28.5m.
Hoeness, who won the World Cup with West Germany in 1974, last year admitted to squirrelling large profits made on the stock market into a Swiss bank account, opting for what German law calls "voluntary disclosure", where evaders can avoid trial by detailing taxes they have skipped and paying them back with 6% interest.But during this week's trial in Munich, it not only emerged that the sums Hoeness evaded were almost 10 times higher than previously assumed, but also that he failed to disclose his accounts within the rules.
http://www.theguardian.com/football/2014/mar/13/uli-hoeness-sentenced-three-and-a-half-years-prison-tax-evasion-germany

The Observer covered this story on Sunday and it looks like there is a whole army of German tax evaders stashing their dosh in Swiss banks or similar:


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Since Hoeness disclosed his affairs last January, a string of celebrities from all fields of German public life have followed suit. Last month Alice Schwarzer, a high-profile feminist, disclosed that she had for years wired money to an account in Switzerland without paying any tax. Shortly after, Berlin's culture secretary, André Schmitz, a Social Democrat, had to resign because of another Swiss account, about the same time, the treasurer of Angela Merkel's Christian Democrats, Helmut Linssen, was found to have hidden money via a shell company in the Bahamas. Theo Sommer, a former editor of influential weekly Die Zeit, was sentenced for tax evasion in January.


More than 26,000 German tax evaders opted for voluntary disclosure in 2013. In Bavaria alone, the figure has quadrupled since 2012. As recently as 2010, the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development criticised Germany for being too lax in its pursuit of tax dodgers. So how has the country managed to raise its game?
Alpine tax havens first came under the spotlight in 2009, when the former boss of Deutsche Post, Klaus Zumwinkel, got a suspended jail sentence and a €1m fine after the authorities had bought CDs from whistleblowers that contained names of those suspected of evading tax via investments in Liechtenstein.


The very fear that tax authorities could get their hands on further CDs has worked wonders since, said economist Markus Henn of the Tax Justice Network. "Voluntary disclosure is a nice idea in principle, but it only really works if there is some threat that the evasion may be uncovered in another way. And the CDs just did the job."


A key factor was the collapse of a deal between Germany and Switzerland in November 2012, after much opposition from the German Social Democrats, the Green party and the leftwing Die Linke.  The deal would have given high-profile tax evaders a chance to disclose their crimes anonymously; Hoeness has hinted that he only chose to go public after the Swiss deal collapsed.
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/mar/08/uli-hoeness-tax-evasion-bayern-munich

Perhaps some of the criticisms of Greece might now be a bit more muted?


Tony