As Guest Editor David Whyte (How Corrupt is Britain?) comments in his editorial:

“We are overwhelmed by the scale, frequency and variety of corruption cases in Britain, from police manipulation of evidence, to over-charging in out-sourced public contracts, by way of cash-for-access scandals involving prominent politicians and price fixing, market manipulation and fraud in key sectors of the economy.”

TJN has long held the view that Britain is at the forefront of the global supply side of corruption.  Ten years ago TJN’s director John Christensen slammed the Transparency International Corruption Perceptions Index for corrupting perceptions of corruption, arguing that:

“The elephant in the living room of the corruption debate is the role played by the global infrastructure of banks, legal and accounting businesses, tax havens and related financial intermediaries in providing an offshore interface between the illicit and licit economies.”

Also in this edition:

Allyson Pollock examines how the Private Finance Initiative has been embraced by successive governments and enthusiastically promoted abroad, generating windfall profits for banks and others and driving the marketisation of health and education;

Vickie Cooper looks at how the London and the UK property market has become a laundry for tyrants, mobsters and tax cheats.

Steve Tombs considers how endemic corruption in the UK’s financial sector, which relies on the active connivance of the state and leading political parties, has repeatedly defrauded countless millions of people in Britain and the rest of the world.

http://www.taxjustice.net/2016/05/02/tax-justice-focus-the-corruption-issue/