The ruling from the advocate general of the EU Court of Justice turns a light on the Apple tax affair again.
In 2018, the Irish government was forced to set up a €14.3 billion ‘escrow’ account to take money from Apple until legal issues were resolved.
The EU had originally ruled that they owed that money back to the Irish taxpayers.
But ever since 2018, the money has started to disappear and has already declined by €1 billion.
One reason is that Apple has been allowed to take money out of the fund to pay taxes in other jurisdictions.
The other reason is that the Irish government is paying private corporations millions to ‘manage’ the fund. These include Bank of New York Mellon, Amundi Asset Management, Goldman Sachs, and Blackrock.
But despite creaming off millions, they have let the fund decline due to bad investments.
What other agency would pay out this money to financiers to make a loss?
On top of that, the Irish government paid out millions to legal companies to defend a case for why Ireland should NOT receive the money.
Up to 2020, William Fry, for example, had received €3 million in fees.
We need to end this nonsense. Drop the legal case in support of Apple and just take the money to tackle the housing crisis.
