Another Wealthy Hard Brexiteer Jumps Ship

TruePublica Editor: Ineos’ billionaire CEO Jim Ratcliffe is a hardline Brexiteer. He has openly stated that he supported the common market, but not a United States of Europe.

“Never forget that we have a decent set of cards” – said Ratcliffe in a press release on the Ineos website in an article entitled ‘Vote of Confidence After Brexit.”

On Brexit negotiations Ratcliffe brimmed with a poised certainty: “there is no room for weakness or crumpling at 3am when the going gets tough and most points are won or lost.” He went on to say: ‘rigour and grit’ mixed with ‘politeness and charm’ were now needed from those negotiating Britain’s exit from the European Union.”

Weakness and crumbling seem to be the key characteristics of a Conservative party who drove the country down this slippery slope in the first place.

All that bluster, confidence and certainty has evaporated over the months as dire warnings from industry after industry became a reality. For Ratcliffe, a Brit from Lancashire, now a billionaire fracker, he can simply jump ship – the same as others have done with his recent announcement to abandon Britain for Monaco.

 

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Washington/London: The owner of chemical giant Ineos, who has been leading the charge to expand the environmentally destructive practice of fracking to the United Kingdom and mainland Europe, is reportedly planning to move to the tax haven of Monaco.

 

Ineos’ billionaire CEO Jim Ratcliffe—named the richest man in the UK this year, and who was also knighted in June—has waged a public campaign to downplay the risks of fracking in the UK. The supply of fracked gas would feed the company’s energy-intensive petrochemical facilities, which are major sources of air and water pollution around the world.

Reacting to the news that Ratcliffe is moving to live in a tax haven, Joe Corré of Talk Fracking said: “Jim Ratcliffe has used the legal system in the UK to silence people’s right to protest in the form of far-reaching draconian injunctions. He’s bought the government pushing through permitted development for fracking against science and against the will of the people. After all that, Britain’s richest man – worth £22 Billion – has made himself a tax exile in Monaco.”

Steve Mason, the spokesman for Frack Free United, added: “Here we see the true colours of Jim Ratcliffe and Ineos. Just like Amazon, Ratcliffe’s primary aim is making tax-free cash at the expense of the UK population, which includes environmental and health impacts for hundreds of communities. This trumps his cynical use of the America’s Cup team and the sponsoring of kids’ fun runs to greenwash his plans to frack up the North to enrich his plastics empire. The artful dodger has definitely been bettered!”

Food & Water Watch and Food & Water Europe Executive Director Wenonah Hauter issued the following statement: “Jim Ratcliffe has pioneered Trans-Atlantic gas liquids shipments from Pennsylvania, which means more fracking and pollution in the United States and more plastics manufacturing pollution in Scotland. All of that drilling brings us closer to climate chaos, which is why the fight against fracking must be global. Polluters like Ratcliffe must be held responsible for the damage they are causing around the globe.”

 

Over the past dozen years, Ineos has transformed from a global chemical powerhouse into an oil, fossil fuel gas and petrochemical conglomerate. The company’s number of shale licenses makes them UK’s number one wannabe-fracker.

Ineos promoted itself as an “Anglo-Swiss” company. In 2016, Ineos re-opened its London headquarters with fanfare, and its executive owners became UK tax residents. Despite Ineos’ substantial UK footprint, it is far from an English company; parent company Ineos Limited is incorporated in the Isle of Man, a low-tax offshore finance centre. And many of Ineos’ biggest holding companies—such as Ineos AG, Ineos Holdings AG and Ineos Europe AG—are based in Switzerland.

 

 

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