The controversy around Google\u2019s tax deal with British tax officials grabbed headlines this past week, prompting further questions about how overseas criminals launder billions of pounds through the UK.<\/p>\n
Multinational corporations such as Google and Facebook minimize their European income tax bills through “favorable”<\/em> tax schemes in countries like Ireland (aka the Double Irish), the Netherlands (aka the Dutch Sandwich), and Luxembourg, which they argue are legitimate.<\/p>\n Google\u2019s so-called “sweetheart deal”<\/em> saw the internet giant pay \u00a3130 million, just 2%, to the UK taxman on its reported profits of \u00a36 billion in Britain over the past ten years, which the European Commission says could be a breach of EU competition rules.<\/p>\n While the British government has defended the deal, an online survey from YouGov Daily<\/a> found that 71 percent of respondents believe the deal should be investigated by EU authorities.<\/p>\n An author who literally wrote the book at the mafia in Naples, Italy, says the UK exchequer is also losing out on billions of pounds due to money laundering by various “organized crime”<\/em> groups.<\/p>\n “Today the City of London (together with Wall Street) is the world\u2019s largest laundry for dirty money from the drug trade,”<\/em> Roberto Saviano, author of the book Gomorrah<\/em> told the UK\u2019s Independent<\/a> newspaper.<\/p>\n