Panama

The Panamanian papers are the single biggest document leak in the history of the world so far.  The government has stated that it is going to set up a task force to investigate this matter.  Cool.  Make a change from the Guardian and other news organisations from doing this, doesn't it?  Anyway, in this world of austerity (When has the world not been in one), tax evasion and tax avoidance is far more newsworthy than it used to be.  Which begs the question, how qualified are the government to investigate this matter?

The government have department that look into fraud and into people who do tax evasion  and then bring them to justice.  These departments are HM Revenue and Customs, Her Majesty’s Treasury, National Fraud Authority, and the Serious Fraud Office.  Each of these departments has an interest in finding people who are defrauding you out of tax money.  

When a case is investigated they use something called Forensic Accountants. These guys have the job of going through books and finding where people have hidden their money OR where they are siphoning off the money and where.  This is a pretty cool job, if you think about it. They make the numbers sing and dance and tell the story of what people are up to. So what does this mean for us?  Well, how many people do each of the above departments have who are trained in Forensic Accounting?  If they are going to start an investigation into the Panama papers, are the government agencies qualified to work on it?

So I asked the above departments the following question:

Please can you tell me how many of your staff have a Bachelor's Degree (Or higher Qualification) in Forensic accounting.

Makes sense doesn't it?  If they haven't got the training then they probably cannot do the investigation (That almost rhymes!)

Where to start?  The National Fraud Authority (NFA) is an executive agency of the Home Office (Directly copied from what do they know).  [They] work with a huge range of stakeholders from across the wider government, law enforcement, industry and voluntary/charity sectors to focus and coordinate the fight against fraud in the UK. Fraudsters attack all economic sectors and parts of our society. Our fight against them is much more effective when we work together.  Sounds pretty cool.  How many people have a qualification in forensic accounting?  Turns out they don't have that information.  It also turns out that they closed in march… DO’H!

What about HM Revenue and Customs?  Surely they would have a department who would be dedicated in looking into financial dealings? They have 127 members of staff in posts that are wholly or partly forensic accountant roles; all of them have an accountancy qualification from a professional accountancy body. That's not a lot when you think of it.  Think of how many cases that they have to deal with (That's another FoI request for another day).

The interesting thing is that (at time of writing) Her Majesty’s Treasury and the Serious Fraud Office have yet to answer me.  I wonder what they will answer.  Cause the next question is to find out how many people work there and how many cases they have :-)