Prime Minister of Britain, David Cameron
The Guardian, a British Newspaper has attacked British Prime Minister David Cameron over his unruly and undiplomatic comment against Nigeria.
The media outfit lashed out at Cameron for calling Nigeria a
'fantastically corrupt' country. In it's editorial today, it called on
Cameron to look home as it described the Britain as one of the countries
'killing' most African states.
The complete editorial reads:
"There are times when a manual earth-restructuring implement is
best referred to as a spade, so let us speak plainly. A summit on
corruption will be held on Thursday in a city that is internationally
recognised (by the IMF, among others) as a tax haven. It is being hosted
by a politician who admitted last month that he has personally profited
from offshore finance and whose party is bankrolled by an industry that
makes extravagant use of those same tax havens. Not only that, he has
intervened to aid tax avoiders. That’s right, David Cameron is holding a
meeting on corruption.
The prime minister is not personally corrupt – but he is
certainly guilty of epic hypocrisy. So, for that matter, are Britain and
the west. They have spent decades ordering poor countries and failed
states to sort out their problems with dodgy money, even while taking
much of that dodgy money and ploughing it through their banks, their
ritzy stores, their estate agents, and their offshore tax havens – with
barely any questions asked or eyebrows raised. When Mr Cameron was
caught on camera on Tuesday boasting to the Queen of the “fantastically
corrupt countries” turning up at Lancaster House this week, he might
have mentioned that Afghanistan is a failed state that did not get any
less failed over 13 years of British intervention. And he should
certainly have mentioned that the president of Nigeria, Muhammadu
Buhari, is coming to London to lobby it to sort out the tax havens in
its own backyard. Indeed, Mr Cameron might have quoted a letter sent to
him a fortnight ago by campaigners in Nigeria.
“We are embarked on a nationwide anti-corruption campaign,” the
letter said. “But these efforts are sadly undermined if countries such
as your own are welcoming our corrupt to hide their ill-gotten gains in
your luxury homes, department stores, car dealerships, private schools
and anywhere else that will accept their cash with no questions asked.
The role of London’s property market as vessels to conceal stolen wealth
has been exposed in court documents, reports, documentaries and more.” So
the president of the Nigerian senate, Bukola Saraki, currently facing
allegations that he failed to declare his assets, owns a property in
London’s Belgravia in his own name. But last month’s Panama Papers
revealed that the £5.7m property next door is owned by companies
incorporated in the Seychelles and British Virgin Islands, whose
respective shareholders are Saraki’s wife and former special assistant.
And a £1.65m townhouse in Kensington is shown as belonging to a BVI
company whose sole shareholder is Folorunsho Coker, former head of the
number plate production authority of the state of Lagos and currently
business adviser to the governor of Lagos. None of these individuals may
have done anything wrong, but the charge from those campaigners is hard
to duck. Under successive governments, from Thatcher to Blair to
Cameron, London has become the financial centre for the world’s dirty
money.
A third of all the trillions hiding offshore are sitting in tax
havens linked to the UK, according to Oxfam. These havens rely on
Britain for security and protection. The Jersey pound note features the
Queen. On the Caymans, they sing as the national anthem God Save the
Queen. Yet Whitehall persists in pretending they are autonomous – even
though London has overridden them before, on the abolition of capital
punishment, say, or the decriminalising of homosexual acts. It will not
do so on shady finance, however. The result is that Britain will soon
bring in a public register of who ultimately owns the companies listed
here – even while its overseas territories won’t. The Caymans and the
rest claim that this is because they are home to perfectly legitimate
operations – in which case, what have they got to hide?
This fudge suits both the City and the havens. The accountancy
firms and tax lawyers and wealth managers in London will continue to
reap fat fees by using their branch offices scattered across offshore
Britain to look after clients seeking low tax and secrecy – even while
the UK can claim that its domestic financial industry is as clean as can
be. Few will call this corruption or hypocrisy, as it wears a sharp
suit and talks so nicely.
In Oscar Wilde’s The Importance of Being Earnest, Cecily
implores Gwendolen: “This is no time for wearing the shallow mask of
manners. When I see a spade I call it a spade.” The reply comes: “I am
glad to say that I have never seen a spade. It is obvious that our
social spheres have been widely different.”
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