Defaulters List Shows Irish Revenue Netting Some Big Fish

by Jason Gorringe, Tax-News.com, London

03 April 2006

The Irish Revenue Commission has named and shamed a number of high profile Irish business people in its latest tax defaulters list, published by the Revenue last week.

Among those who made settlements with the Revenue for outstanding tax were four former executives of AIB, Ireland's largest bank, who paid a total amount of EUR323,313 after admitting to evading tax through offshore investment schemes.

All four of the former AIB employees were investors in Faldor Ltd, a British Virgin Islands company managed by AIB Investment Managers.

In 2003, the bank discovered that a number of senior executives in the early nineties had established an unauthorised investment account with AIB investment managers routed through Faldor.

The settlements by the former AIB executives were among 148 settlements reached with the Revenue the 3-month period to 31 December 2005 for a total of EUR28.11 million.

Of the 148 published settlements, 60 were for amounts exceeding EUR100,000; 13 exceeded EUR500,000 and 5 exceeded EUR1,000,000.

Sixty-four settlements totalling EUR11.83 million relate to bogus non-resident account holders, 1 settlement totalling EUR.30 million relates to an Ansbacher account holder, 31 settlements totalling EUR10.10 million relate to Revenue investigations into offshore funds, 3 settlements totalling EUR1.64 million relate to Revenue's NIB Investigations and 1 settlement totalling EUR.02 million relates to Revenue's Single Premium Insurance Product Investigation.

The total yield from Revenue audit and investigation programmes in the period 1 October 2005 to 31 December 2005 was EUR125.26 million.

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