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Private Eye 1242, (7 August 2009), p7
Street of Shame: Grauning Wallets
Guardian Media Group continues to tie itself in knots over tax.
Quote:“The board believes it is the group’s corporate and social responsibility to pay the appropriate amount of taxes in accordance with UK and overseas tax legislation,” says the annual report. “The board also believes that it has a commercial responsibility to manage the group’s affairs in a tax-efficient manner within those rules as well as to manage the group’s exposure to tax. The group adopts a conservative tax strategy and is transparent in its dealings with tax.”
Despite all this earnest wittering, transparency is in short supply. Buried on page 86 is the admission that two of GMG’s holding companies in magazine publisher Emap (which it jointly owns with a private equity firm Apax), Eden Acquisition 2 Ltd and Eden Acquisition 4 Ltd, are registered in the Cayman Islands.
There is also mention of a third company, called Eden 2 & Cie SCA. Where is this registered? The report doesn’t say. But a trawl of international company records gives an address on 41 Boulevard Prince Henri in that well-known haven of tax transparency and non-avoidance, the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg!
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[quote=Paul Rigby]
Quote:“The board believes it is the group’s corporate and social responsibility to pay the appropriate amount of taxes in accordance with UK and overseas tax legislation,” says the annual report. “The board also believes that it has a commercial responsibility to manage the group’s affairs in a tax-efficient manner within those rules as well as to manage the group’s exposure to tax.
Ah, nice to see that the Mephistopheles approach to business morality (snigger) is extant.
The shadow is a moral problem that challenges the whole ego-personality, for no one can become conscious of the shadow without considerable moral effort. To become conscious of it involves recognizing the dark aspects of the personality as present and real. This act is the essential condition for any kind of self-knowledge.
Carl Jung - Aion (1951). CW 9, Part II: P.14
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Kindly stop sniggering, DG, and remove that Toynbee clothes peg from your nose while you're at it: This isn't your everyday tax evasion, I'll have you know, this is ethical tax evasion - with the CIA, doubtless, at the end of the tangled knot of fronts and havens.
God bless the SS Grauniad, says I, and all the liberal rubes who sail with her. Right on to the rocks.
PS I wonder what offence the paper had caused to the spooks at Private Eye? Any ideas?
