Their confidence was misplaced. In January 2015, Mr Justice Nicholas Blake, sitting in the Old Bailey, rejected the SFO’s argument. “The case remains a matter of conjecture and suspicion,” he wrote in his judgment. To confiscate assets, prosecutors have to prove that the frozen money related to a specific crime and, he ruled, the SFO had totally failed to do so.
Well, yes, that’s sorta the standard thing isn’t it? We’ve not got a crime called “being a bad ‘un” and we should all be most grateful that we don’t.
We’ve not got a crime called “being a bad ‘un”
I am quite sure the Groan would like to see such a rule introduced, especially for tax avoiders, who are, by definition, acting within the law.
Of course, they would get to determine what bad means in every case, they think.
Not about corruption but about a a desperate urgent thrusting new economics designed to COMPLETELY DESTROY the current orthodoxy and lead us into the sunlit uplands of social equity. Coincidentally and not inevitably at all based on high taxes
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/apr/12/doughnut-growth-economics-book-economic-model
God, Monbiot’s such a balloon
Yes, I’ve got that parked off to the side as something to write about more formally somewhere.
No wonder the SFO is known as the Serious Farce Office.
We may not officially have such a crime but we have individual or groups of policemen and tax inspectors who do -really do – act as if there were such a crime. In fact I believe the ironic phrase used by some of their saner colleages is remarkably similar: wrong’uns
The Americans have such a law. If you look a bit suspicious and have a reasonable amount of money on you, they can and do take it without even bothering with a trial.
Tar and feathers seems too mild.
Being pulled apart by teams of horses seems too mild.
Yet if Plod turn up at your house, see a wad of cash they can take it and you have to prove where it came from. Saved up isn’t acceptable from what I understand.
@SMFS
+1
“We’ve not got a crime called “being a bad ‘un””
Many USA states allow police to keep confiscated alleged “proceeds of crime assets” even when accused found Not Guilty.
Another evil Trump needs to eradicate.