The SNP teamed up with the Tories to torpedo rules that would have outlawed handing public money to tax avoidance companies, the Sunday Mail can reveal.
We told last week how Nicola Sturgeon’s new Scottish National Investment Bank (SNIB) is ploughing £50million into a forestry fund run by asset managers Gresham House.
The firm for “high-net-worth” clients seeking “tax-efficient structures” has offshore links and chairman Anthony Townsend was named in the Paradise Papers.
It has now emerged that when it was being set up, former Labour MSP Neil Findlay tried to ban investments with tax avoidance companies.
But shamed ex-finance secretary Derek Mackay objected and it was voted down by SNP and Tory MSPs. At a meeting in 2019, Findlay said: “The public are sick to the back teeth of seeing multinational companies making huge profits and paying little or no tax. The SNIB should not be lending to tax evaders or avoiders.”
But Mackay said: “I have some concerns about the application of the provisions relating to tax avoidance… I am concerned the amendment would be counter-productive in its attempts to deal with the problem.”
The amendment was opposed by SNP MSPs Colin Beattie, Willie Coffey, Richard Lyle and Gordon MacDonald. Tories Jamie Halcro Johnston, Gordon Lindhurst and Dean Lockhart also objected and it was rejected.
Findlay said: “I was sickened when SNP and Tory MSPs collaborated to defeat not just the amendment but others that would have ensured the bank only invested in companies that recognised trade unions and did not use zero-hours contracts.”
Gresham House has admitted owning a management company in Guernsey – regarded as a tax haven – and Townsend was named in the Paradise Papers as having been a director of an offshore firm in the Isle of Man.
We revealed in February 2020 how Mackay allowed banker Willie Watt to be appointed chair of the SNIB without the oversight of ethics watchdogs. Holyrood ministers have committed to putting £2billion of public funding into it over the next decade.
The Scottish Government said: “Individual investment decisions are a matter for the bank. The bank is required to publish its tax policy, including how it will consider tax implications of its investments and partners, over the coming year.”
