EARLIER this week The Herald published a story some people did not like. Scottish shell firms, we revealed, had been used to launder at least £4 billion in dirty money from Russia.
Cue anger, not at the criminals syphoning cash from the former Soviet Union but at this newspaper. “Shame,” wrote the first commenter on the online version of the story. “This is just another sorry attempt to try and besmirch the reputation of the country and the Government.” Our two-year-long investigation, he added, was a smear to make the SNP look bad.
This has been an underlying theme of much of the feedback on The Herald’s reporting on how international criminals abuse Scottish shell firms, especially a once obscure kind of entity called limited partnerships, or SLPs. Some particularly passionate supporters of independence have insisted that the very fact we refer to such firms as “Scottish” is a sign of bias.
We should, they say, call them “British”. Why? Well, because, as we have reported over the past two years, the part of Scots Law that allows the owners of SLPs to be secret, pay no taxes and file no accounts is reserved to Westminster.
That did not stop some unionists tiresomely suggesting the money-laundering was the fault of the SNP administration and not criminals.
Welcome to Scotland, 2017 where, for some people at least, everything has to be seen through the often narrow and obfuscating lens of constitutional politics.
Why highlight this? Because it contrasts quite so dramatically with the statesmanlike way in which MPs and MSPs are dealing with this complicated issue. The first politician I remember commenting on SLPs was Hugh Henry, a former Labour MSP, nearly two years ago as details emerged that such firms had been used to carry out what amounted to the biggest bank robbery of the century, the looting of $1bn from financial institutions in Moldova.
Mr Henry set the sensible tone adopted by members of all parties since; he made practical suggestions about regulating the company-forming agents who churn out the shell companies being abused.
Hugh Henry
Since then every political party in Scotland has signed up to a campaign, organised by Oxfam, to reform SLPs.
The UK Government, after what I understand was intense but mostly private lobbying from its Scottish counterpart, is reviewing such structures.
The campaign for change in the House of Commons was led by an SNP MP, Roger Mullin, who has preferred persuasion to open conflict. He has found common cause with some Tory ministers genuinely concerned about Britain and Scotland’s role as a “laundromat” for foreign criminals. That is grown-up politics.
Roger Mullin
Closer to home, Green MSP Andy Wightman is working on ways in which he thinks Scottish authorities could make life harder for money launderers.
So has The Herald smeared anyone? Thanks to help from colleagues around Europe, we are highlighting a modest but crucial Scottish element in a huge global scandal.
Some stories are bigger than the tiresome argy-bargy of “Scottish politics as usual”. Fortunately, quite a lot of Scottish politicians also rise above the crash-bang-wallop fray.
How The Herald reported money-laundering scandal
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