Lloyds accused of selling tax avoidance schemes

Lloyds Banking Group has been accused of selling tax avoidance schemes that channel funds through China.

Staff at Lloyds Jersey branch were secretly filmed by journalists at BBC’s Panorama program offering to “get around” the European Savings Tax Directive, by paying money to clients in Hong Kong.

Lloyds has denied any wrong doing and said it would not comment on the actions of a single employee.

Controversially, Lloyds was one of the banks rescued by the UK government last year with a £17bn bail out.

According to Panorama, the employee said it was of “no interest to us whether you tell the tax man or not. It's not our business.”

This prompted an angry response from Dave Hartnett, permanent secretary at HMRC, who said: “That's an incredibly irresponsible thing for him to have said. We might interpret that to mean he was so reckless that he was giving his client a signal that he didn't have to make a return of income. Were we to find that happening we would take a very dim view of it."

Lloyds responded to the claims by highlighting its “robust anti money-laundering systems and processes”.

“These processes are designed to ensure that colleagues are able to identify and report any suspicious activity on the part of our customers,” the bank said.

“We take any allegation of misconduct very seriously and conduct thorough investigations, involving our regulators and law enforcement agencies when appropriate. Should an investigation ever show that misconduct had taken place then we would proceed to take such disciplinary action as appropriate.”

Read the full story: Tax inquiry into Lloyds off-shore