YOU are to be congratulated on your continuing exposure of Scottish Limited Partnerships (SLPs) as a financial vehicle deliberately marketed to the unscrupulous to allow them to cover their tracks (“UK admits that 28,000 Scots shell firms breach transparency rules”, The Herald, October 13). The fact that many of those who use them are ignoring legal requirements to identify who actually controls the company is hardly unexpected. The “elephant in the room” is however that it wasn’t the Russian mafia or shady figures in Uzbekistan who created the legal framework that allows such companies to exist but the “elite” of Scotland and the UK.
Where is the clamour about the faceless British characters who have for decades benefited from using SLPs to re-invest funds supposedly “offshore” in some tax haven? The billions of dodgy money accumulated by tax evasion and tax avoidance doesn’t lie in the sunshine overseas under a palm tree but does the return trip to the UK and elsewhere by means of handy devices such as SLPs.
If the historical anonymity granted to SLPs is simply a method of preventing transparency then surely the answer is to abolish them completely? That being the case why the reluctance of our governments and legal system to do so. Answers on a postcard to...
David J Crawford,
85 Whittingehame Court, 1300 Great Western Road, Glasgow.
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