Lloyds Bank hit by Obama tax purge Banking group drops American customers in UK ahead of costly proposals to stamp out tax evasion   By Louise Armitstead

   Lloyds Banking Group is ditching American customers based in Britain pending a crackdown on international tax evasion planned by President Barack Obama. This week American private client account-holders at Lloyds's received letters informing them of an "important change in policy regarding clients who are resident, domiciled or linked to the United States by property or asset holdings". They were told the bank had "no choice" but to "cease acting as your investment manager." One letter sent to Bank of Scotland's portfolio management division, which is now part of Lloyds, said: "The USA has a mature regulatory environment governed by its Securities and Exchange Commission. These regulations mean that we are not licensed to manage portfolios for US clients." The letter added: "Unfortunately we cannot offer an equivalent service from within Lloyds Banking Group." Clients have been advised to transfer their assets. One recipient, who has lived in the UK for over 25 years, said: "After all this time, I've suddenly been told I must take my money elsewhere and I don't understand why. Now I'm scared that other banks won't take me on either." In its letters to clients, Lloyds has not referred to specific legislation. But last month, The Sunday Telegraph reported that British banks and stockbrokers were threatening to close down accounts held by American citizens due to concerns over new international tax proposals could make it too expensive for them to service the clients. The proposals, which were unveiled in the President's first budget, have been designed to clamp down on American tax evaders abroad. But bank bosses say that in practice they could be…

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    Anti-immigration demonstrators hold signs and American flags during an anti-immigration rally.    

  Iranian protesters are dying for freedom – where is Barack Obama? By Nile Gardiner World Last updated: December 27th, 200964 Comments Comment on this article I wrote back in June about the shameful silence of the Obama administration during the mass street protests that greeted Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s fraudulent re-election victory as President of Iran. As White House spokesman Robert Gibbs ludicrously put it, the administration was “impressed by the vigorous debate and enthusiasm this election generated.” Or in Vice President Joe Biden’s words on NBC’s Meet the Press, describing Ahmadinejad’s victory – “we’re going to withhold comment… I mean we’re just waiting to see.”Embarrassingly for Washington, even many European leaders showed more backbone in condemning the Iranian regime’s brutal suppression of protestors, with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton humiliatingly outflanked by her French and German counterparts, who had no qualms about speaking out swiftly and firmly against the election result and the actions of the Iranian government.In the six months that have followed, Barack Obama’s high-risk engagement strategy has simply encouraged more repression from the Mullahs, as well as ever greater levels of defiance over Iran’s nuclear weapons programme. As Con Coughlin noted in an excellent piece for The Wall Street Journal last month, Obama’s Iran diplomacy isn’t working:“Iranian human-rights groups say that since the government crackdown began in late June, at least 400 demonstrators have been killed while another 56 are unaccounted, which is several times higher than the official figures. The regime has established a chain of unofficial, makeshift prisons to deal with the protesters, where torture and rape are said to be commonplace. In Tehran alone, 37 young Iranian men and women…

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