The biggest tax evaders ever

Tax evasion is nothing new, it's been going on as long as there have been taxes. Here's a list of some of history's worst evaders – or at least, those who got caught.

Good tax avoiders do pretty well in the UK. If you can get to be a non-dom, if you trust your spouse enough to let her move abroad with all your capital assets, or if you can really use tax havens properly, you can all but remove yourself from the tax system.

But while that's mostly OK with the state, tax evasion isn't. Given the seemingly endless confusion over what makes an evader and what makes an avoider (the first is illegal, the second is not) I've been wandering through the history of tax evasion and making a list for you of some of the biggest and best evaders ever.

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Merryn Somerset Webb

Merryn Somerset Webb started her career in Tokyo at public broadcaster NHK before becoming a Japanese equity broker at what was then Warburgs. She went on to work at SBC and UBS without moving from her desk in Kamiyacho (it was the age of mergers).

After five years in Japan she returned to work in the UK at Paribas. This soon became BNP Paribas. Again, no desk move was required. On leaving the City, Merryn helped The Week magazine with its City pages before becoming the launch editor of MoneyWeek in 2000 and taking on columns first in the Sunday Times and then in 2009 in the Financial Times

Twenty years on, MoneyWeek is the best-selling financial magazine in the UK. Merryn was its Editor in Chief until 2022. She is now a senior columnist at Bloomberg and host of the Merryn Talks Money podcast -  but still writes for Moneyweek monthly. 

Merryn is also is a non executive director of two investment trusts – BlackRock Throgmorton, and the Murray Income Investment Trust.