37. Taxpayer faces bigger bill for 2012 Olympics

By Amol Rajan, Sports News Correspondent Friday, 30 January 2009

The taxpayer may end up paying to build every major venue in London's 2012 Olympic Games because private finance has dried up, the chairman of the Olympic Delivery Authority admitted yesterday.

John Armitt said it was possible that no private sector money would be found for the £1bn Olympic village in the heart of the park, the most high-profile victim of the global downturn which has already cost the taxpayer £326m more than was planned for.

The authority has already given up hope of securing funding for the £355m international media centre, which will now be paid for entirely by the Exchequer. In total, £496m has already been used from the £2bn contingency fund set aside for the project.

In an interview with The Independent, Mr Armitt admitted yesterday that there remained a chance that the no private money at all would be found for the Olympic village.

Nevertheless, Mr Armitt confirmed that the ODA could not "rule out" a complete failure of private sector funding for the village. "There remains an outside chance and it's a risk which at the end of the day will be properly considered between us and the Government," he said.

Savings that could reduce the cost of the village by up to £100m are currently being sought. When first planned, the site, which will comprise apartments, shops, restaurants and cafes, was going to be entirely funded by the private sector.

Over the past 18 months that figure was revised downward to half the total cost of the project. But because of the global downturn, Lend Lease, the Australian firm that is preferred developer for the project, has been unable to secure credit for the scheme.

As a result, the number of flats in the village, which will house 17,000 athletes and officials during the Games before being sold off, has been scaled down from an initial figure of 4,500. Yesterday Mr Armitt revealed for the first time that the final number of flats will be 2,873, meaning that athletes will have to be housed five to an apartment rather than four.

Mr Armitt, a former chief of Network Rail and Railtrack, also said the Olympic organisers were alive to the possibility that not all their contractors would survive the downturn. "Will we get through the next two years without any of our key suppliers getting into difficulty and us having to replace them? That's clearly a risk now that is greater than it has been," he said.

38. Brown leads global drive to close down tax havens

By Nigel Morris, Deputy Political Editor

Thursday, 19 February 2009

The Prime Minister Gordon Brown at Downing Street yesterday

Britain is leading moves to end the privileged status of tax havens as part of a planned “global new deal” to tackle the international recession.

Gordon Brown is believed to have won the support of other world leaders for a drive against offshore shelters used by large firms to cut their tax bills and avoid complex financial regulations. The deal could be done at a summit of world leaders in London on 2 April and form part of wider attempt to revive the global economy.

Speaking yesterday, Mr Brown said the time had come for world leaders to hammer out a “grand bargain” to rebuild the global financial system. He argued that the world had to act as one to supervise banks, including ending the practice of firms and financial institutions setting up registered offices in islands and small countries which offer lower tax rates than the countries in which they are based. Mr Brown said: “We want the whole of the world to take action. That will mean action against regulatory and tax havens in parts of the world which have escaped the regulatory attention they need.” He will face a daunting task in persuading many smaller countries that depend on attracting multinational companies to fall in line and he admitted that success depended on the “rest of the world agreeing with us that this action needs to be taken”.

But he added: “I am more confident now – having talked to world leaders – that we are in a position to take further action on this matter.”

President Barack Obama has been scathing over American companies paying tax offshore, which is believed to account for hundreds of billions of dollars lost to the US Treasury.

He said on the presidential campaign trail: “There is a building in the Cayman Islands that houses supposedly 12,000 US-based corporations. That’s either the biggest building in the world, or the biggest tax scam in the world – and we know which one it is.”

Mr Brown declined to name the tax havens he had in mind, but there are several under British jurisdiction. They include Jersey, Guernsey and Alderney in the Channel Islands, the Isle of Man, Bermuda, the Cayman Islands and the British Virgin Islands.

Mr Brown was speaking after talks in Downing Street with the International Monetary Fund’s managing director Dominique Strauss-Kahn and the World Bank president Robert Zoellick. He is due to meet European leaders in the next few days in preparation for the 2 April summit.

He defended his plans for a massive stimulus of the UK economy and said he was pressing other nations to follow the British lead. He added: “That is at the crux of how we can move towards recovery in the next few months.” A document published by Downing Street setting out its plans for the “Road to the London Summit” suggested that Britain could move to stimulate the economy – either by tax cuts or extra spending – if measures already in train were not effective.