Offshore accounts raise €118 million

The Revenue Commissioners have collected more than €118 million from persons holding funds offshore, the Minister for Finance, Mr McCreevy, revealed yesterday.

He said the commissioners would be examining all Irish financial institutions which had, or have had, subsidiaries operating in offshore jurisdictions with a view to establishing the identify of Irish residents holding funds in such subsidiaries.

The Minister said that he had been advised by the commissioners that there were subsidiaries of eight Irish financial institutions operating in either the Isle of Man or the Channel Islands.

"It is known that two further institutions closed their Isle of Man operations in recent years. However, it is not possible to state the total number of individual account-holders in any particular financial institution."

The Fine Gael spokesman on finance, Mr Richard Bruton, asked if the Minister shared his anger that subsidiaries of Irish financial institutions appeared to be used to facilitate wholesale tax-evasion.

"Does he agree that in the case of the Isle of Man alone, the money involved, according to newspaper reports, amounts to €4 billion? "

Mr McCreevy said that a KPMG 1999 study had mentioned the figure of €4 billion allegedly being held in accounts in the Isle of Man."The Revenue Commissioners are not in a position to state what the total amount held offshore may be and how much it relates to tax evasion." He added that it was not illegal to hold an offshore account and there might be legitimate commercial reasons for having such an account. In addition,aa resident in the State might not be ordinarily resident here and, therefore, would only be taxable to the extent that income was remitted to the State.