British prime minister David Cameron has come under pressure to act against Britain's secretive offshore industry at the forthcoming G8 summit in Fermanagh in June, as leaked evidence continued to mount that politicians and tycoons from all over the world have used the British Virgin Islands to hide funds.
More than 130,000 people worldwide are named as holding secret offshore accounts in files leaked to a Washington- based watchdog, according to German newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung , one of the media organisations involved in sifting through more than 2½ million emails and documents.
The study co-ordinated by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists has shed light on the secret world of offshore havens. The 260 gigabytes of data on a computer hard drive included information on 122,000 offshore trusts in 10 tax havens, including the British Virgin Islands, home to 40 per cent of the world’s offshore accounts and shells.
Those named include some of the wealthiest people in more than 170 countries. Not all necessarily have secret bank accounts and in some cases only conducted business through companies they control which are registered offshore.
The prime minister of Georgia, Bidzina Ivanishvili, was the latest to be named, along with prominent Pakistani, Indian, Thai and Indonesian figures, while there was fresh evidence of Britons acting as front directors for companies based in offshore havens such as the BVI.
Secret haven
A senior Liberal Democrat figure said the leaks showed the secret haven of the BVI "stains the face of Britain", as anti-corruption campaigners called for action. Lord Oakeshott, a Lib Dem peer and former treasury spokesman, asked: "How can David Cameron keep a straight face calling for the G8 to make big business pay tax when we let the BVI use British law and British protection to suck in billions in dirty money?"
The islands are a British Overseas Territory, legally under the jurisdiction of the UK (and with a British governor), but in practice self-governed.
Other havens with this UK imprimatur include the Cayman Islands, Gibraltar and the Turks and Caicos Islands.
The UK wields even more control over crown dependencies Jersey, Guernsey and the Isle of Man, whose role in legal tax-avoidance techniques has been documented for decades.
Lord Oakeshott further asked: “How much British aid paid to corrupt countries like Pakistan ends up behind a BVI brass plate?”
Despite mounting evidence that British sham directors are selling their names as fronts for offshore secrecy, the UK’s department for business, innovation and skills signalled that politicians are reluctant to move against them.
A report has been sent to ministers by the department’s deputy head of corporate governance, Jo Shanmugalingam. This followed an investigation last year into the leaked data which revealed two dozen Britons, giving obscure offshore addresses, were purporting to control thousands of companies.
Blacklisted company
The latest example is of a "general builder", Kevin Gaitely. He gives an address in south London and is the director of Tamalaris Consolidated, a company blacklisted by the UK and US as a front for Iran.
Robert Palmer of the campaign group Global Witness repeated the call for Mr Cameron to act: “The massive cache of leaked documents demonstrates how hidden ownership of shell companies facilitates corruption, tax dodging and other crimes. The time to deal with this issue is now. Given that he has pledged to tackle these secretive shell companies at this year’s G8 summit in Northern Ireland, he and his fellow leaders must commit to publishing information on the people who ultimately control and own companies.”
There is nothing in the documents to indicate whether or not the money involved is held offshore illegally. Among the facts disclosed is that offshore funds are a major source of investment in both China and Russia.
They are particularly popular in Russia but other areas accounting for a large share of the addresses of those setting up accounts are China, Hong Kong, Taiwan and other former Russian republics.
The data point to some of the world's largest art collectors using such accounts. The figures confirm a substantial number of Greeks had been putting money into undeclared offshore havens. – ( Guardian service)
