LONDON, Feb 18: Britain's richest man has been slammed for plans to move to Monaco to save billions in tax less than a year after being knighted.
Brexiteer Sir Jim Ratcliffe is reckoned to be saving £4billion by relocating to the principality on the French riviera.
Ratcliffe, knighted for his services to business, has courted controversy over the operations of his chemical firm Ineos, which rammed through a pay deal in Grangemouth that crushed union Unite.
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The Sunday Times revealed that he has been working with accountant PwC on a “labyrinthine” tax avoidance plan that would see him and senior executives Andy Currie and John Reece legally share between £1billion and £10billion tax-free, depriving the Treasury of between £400million and £4billion.
Ratcliffe’s move to the tax haven of Monaco comes after fellow Brexit supporter Sir James Dyson announced he was shifting the headquarters of his vacuum cleaners empire to Singapore.
Lib Dem leader Sir Vince Cable branded Ratcliffe’s plan “deeply cynical”.
He said: “There are thousands of our constituents who are being bankrupted by HM Revenue and Customs action over small-scale tax avoidance while big fish like Ratcliffe are just treating taxation as purely voluntary.”
Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell said: “The greed of these super-rich tax avoiders seems to have no bounds.
“Don’t they realise that every penny they hide away in their tax havens is a penny not spent on our NHS treating the sick or social care looking after our lonely, isolated elderly or the education of our children?”
Ratcliffe, 66, amassed a fortune of more than £21billion by buying petrochemical subsidiaries and streamlining them.
Ineos has an estimated turnover of about £45billion and 18,500 employees across 181 sites in 22 countries.
