The thinktank said the "wage theft" totalled £130m a year and that employers were failing to meet legal requirements to pay employees the minimum wage, and depriving the exchequer of an additional £9m of employer national insurance contributions.
In a legal opinion prepared for consumer group SumOfUs, Lord Macdonald said: "It seems clear, from the evidence we have seen, that there exists credible evidence that HSBC Swiss and/or its employees have engaged over many years in systematic and profitable collusion in serious criminal activity against the exchequers of a number of countries.
Five of the biggest tech firms – Facebook, Google, Apple, Microsoft and the IT company Cisco – deprive the exchequer of £1bn a year, according to research by the campaign group Tax Watch.
Though benefit fraud deprives the exchequer of £1.1bn a year while tax avoidance and evasion deprive it of between £40bn and £120bn, the tabloids relentlessly pursue the petty crooks, while leaving the capos alone.
He is accused of presiding over a rigged auction of second generation (2G) mobile-telephone licences in 2008 that deprived the exchequer of $39 billion—a sum about equal to India's defence budget.
This was also a time of great judicial success for the Serjeants; since only Serjeants could be appointed to the common law courts, many also sat in the Exchequer of Pleas, a court of equity.
The National Audit Office NAOO) adds in another £50bn for criminal and fraudulent transactions – a total loss to the exchequer of nearly £100bn a year.
The Chancellor of the Exchequer, independently head of the Court of Chancery, was also involved in the Exchequer of Pleas as a check on the Lord High Treasurer.
With the shift of the Exchequer of Pleas towards a common law court and loss of its equitable jurisdiction by the Administration of Justice Act 1841, the Chancery became the only national equitable body in the English legal system.
The net effect of all his measures was very limited: a loss to the exchequer of £140m in 2008-09, a yield of £790m in 2009-10 and of £1.9 billion the following year.The heart of the budget thus lay in the outlook that Mr Darling presented for the economy and the public finances.
