Leaders from the Joint Chiefs of Global Tax Enforcement recently issued a notice, available here, commemorating the one-year anniversary of the formation of the so-called J5 Group. The Joint Chiefs of Global Tax Enforcement have combined forces across the globe in an effort to target international tax evasion, hidden bank accounts, and money laundering. The J5 intends to usher in a new era of tax enforcement marked by international cooperation and improved data sharing.
According to the notice:
The five Chiefs who make up the Joint Chiefs of Global Tax Enforcement (J5) have spearheaded this new operational organization specifically focusing on shared areas of concern and cross-national tax crime threats including cyber-crime and crypto-currency as well as enablers of global tax evasion, while working to share intelligence and data in near real time.
The Joint Chiefs of Global Tax Enforcement have dozens of ongoing investigations, including:
sophisticated international enablers of tax evasion, including a global financial institution and its intermediaries who facilitate taxpayers to hide their income and assets. These highly harmful, high-end enablers of tax evasion were previously thought to be beyond the reach of the member countries. The agencies are also cooperating on cases covering crimes from money laundering and the smuggling of illicit commodities to personal tax frauds and evasion. Additionally, there have already been hundreds of data exchanges between J5 partner agencies with more data being exchanged in the past year than the previous 10 years combined.
The J5 recently shut down an important online mixer for cryptocurrencies, and is analyzing seized data. The group has particularly focused its efforts on enablers of tax crimes and virtual currencies. Expect to see numerous announcements of investigations and criminal charges in the coming months.
The J5 includes the heads of tax crime and senior officials from the Australian Criminal Intelligence Commission (ACIC) and Australian Taxation Office (ATO), the Canada Revenue Agency (CRA), the Dutch Fiscal Intelligence and Investigation Service (FIOD), Her Majesty’s Revenue & Customs (HMRC), and Internal Revenue Service Criminal Investigation (IRS-CI).
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