Rishi Sunak’s UK Infrastructure Bank (UKIB), set up by the former chancellor to tackle climate change and promote ‘levelling up’, has earmarked £550m for firms linked to tax havens, a repressive regime and a Tory donor, openDemocracy can reveal.
The figure of £550m is the lion’s share of the £817m it has so far allocated. A leading northern think tank said in response that tax havens were incompatible with levelling up, and that the bank must cut them out of investments.
UKIB announced plans in December last year to invest up to £250m in the solar energy fund NextPower UK ESG, managed by a firm called NextEnergy Capital Ltd that in turn is owned by a Luxembourg parent company: NextEnergy Capital SARL. There are legitimate reasons for a British company to be owned in Luxembourg, but the country is commonly used by corporations to underpay various taxes. An EU parliamentary committee on financial crime and tax avoidance has found that Luxembourg displays the “traits of a tax haven” and “facilitates aggressive tax planning”.
