 PAC Meeting | Feb 26, 2015
[Extract] Deputy John Deasy: Based on what has been in the news in the past few months and on what Revenue has sent us, is there new information arising from what has appeared in the media recently or does Revenue say they knew this back in 2010 and acted? As I understand it, 27 cases have been completed out of 33 and six are ongoing. Chairman (Deputy John McGuinness): We have the information from Revenue and we are going to go through the figures with them. We will be asking about the overall take, how it happened and so on. Deputy John Deasy: I have no problem with doing that but I have a word of caution. If six cases are still ongoing and involve criminal prosecutions, the final figure will not be known. What they say in the committee will have to be open-ended in that regard. Deputy Joe Costello: The week before last there was a police raid on HSBC offices in Switzerland relating to offshore accounts and various documents were taken. Can we get an update on that? It is still a live issue but it would be interesting to know whether any new documents have come into the public domain. Chairman: We will check that point with Revenue and what we do will depend on their reply. Deputy John Deasy: Is there any intention of asking a representative from HSBC to come before the committee? The head of HMRC, the UK equivalent of the Revenue Commissioners, testified in Westminster yesterday along with the CEO of HSBC. Chairman: We have different terms of reference. I would love to extend an invitation to someone from HSBC to attend and if they were willing to do so, I would love to hear what they had to say. Our remit, though, is to work directly with Revenue in this case. It might be worthwhile to write to HSBC to ask if they want to be present at the meeting. Deputy John Deasy: If the chairman and CEO showed up in Westminster, I think they would find it very hard to refuse to show up here. Chairman: We will extend an invitation to them.
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