Osborne warns UK’s richest over tax evasion

More than 100 of the richest people in the UK have been caught hiding billions of pounds in secretive offshore havens, triggering an unprecedented global tax evasion investigation.

Chancellor George Osborne has warned the tax evaders and the 200-odd accountants and advisers accused of helping them cheat the taxman: "The message is simple: if you evade tax, we're coming after you."

HM Revenue & Customs warned those involved, who were named in offshore data first offered to the authorities by a whistleblower in 2009, that they would be hit with "criminal prosecution or significant penalties" for failure to voluntarily disclose their tax irregularities, as the UK stepped up its efforts to clamp down on avoidance ahead of the G8 summit in June.

The 400 GB data cache leaked to the authorities is said to be the same information seen accessed by The Guardian newspaper in its Offshore Secrets series in November 2012 and March this year. It revealed complicated financial structures using companies and trusts spread globally from Singapore and the British Virgin Islands to the Cayman Islands and the Cook Islands.

According to Osborne, the data was "another weapon in HMRC's arsenal" in the fight against global tax evasion. HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC) added it "reveals extensive use of complex offshore structures to conceal assets by wealthy individuals and companies".

Meanwhile, the G7 group of industrialised nations had reached an agreement that there was a need for collective action to target tax evasion and avoidance, according to Osborne.

Osborne who spoke at the end of the two-day meeting in Aylesbury, said it was "incredibly important" that firms and individuals paid due tax.

The talks had shown there were more areas of agreement between the countries than assumed, he added.

The G7 include the US, Germany, the UK, Japan, Italy, France and Canada.

In a news conference held jointly with Bank of England governor Sir Mervyn King, Osborne said there had also been agreement between the countries that it was important to ensure that no bank was "too big to fail".

"We must put regimes in place... to deal with failing banks and to protect taxpayers and to do so in a globally-consistent manner," he said.

The chancellor said the discussions had "reaffirmed that there are still many challenges to securing sustainable global recovery, and we can't take it for granted".

"But we are committed as the advanced economies in playing our part in nurturing that recovery and ensuring a lasting recovery so that we have prosperity in all our countries," he added.