Leaked dossier reveals Queen kept money in tax havens
BRITAIN: The Queen, Bono and one of Donald Trump’s closest advisers are among those whose offshore investments have been revealed in the largest-ever leak, dubbed the ‘‘Paradise Papers’’.
The 13.4 million files, which were obtained after a hack on law firm Appleby – which has offices in Bermuda, the Isle of Man and a number of other tax-havens – show the complex financial dealings of the super-rich and major global corporations.
Lord Ashcroft, the major Tory donor, Wilbur Ross, an adviser to Trump, and Alisher Usmanov, a stakeholder at Arsenal football club, have been named in the documents alongside Stephen Bronfman, chief fundraiser and senior adviser to Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau plus a dozen Trump administration advisers, Cabinet members or major donors.
The documents show that in 2005 the Queen’s private estate invested £7.5 million ($NZ14.2m) in Dover Street VI Cayman Fund LP, held on the Cayman Islands, which in turn invested in BrightHouse, a rent-to-own firm that has been criticised for irresponsible lending, and off-licence chain Threshers.
The Queen does not manage the Duchy of Lancaster’s investments, which are decided by a council, and pays tax voluntarily on any income.
While there is no suggestion of any wrongdoing, it is the first time that the Queen’s offshore investments have been revealed.
The details of the hack, the news of which was first revealed last week, come from 13.4 million files from two offshore service providers and the company registries of 19 tax havens.
Bono, the U2 frontman whose real name is Paul Hewson, was shown to have used a company based in Malta – a low-tax jurisdiction – to pay for a share in a shopping centre in Lithuania. His spokesman said he was a ‘‘passive, minority investor in Nude Estates Malta Ltd’’ which was legally registered.
Ross, Donald Trump’s commerce secretary, has a stake in a shipping company that does business with a gas production firm part-owned by Russian President Vladimir Putin’s son-in-law, the Paradise Papers showed.
Ross, 79, a billionaire former private equity titan, has a stake in Navigator Holdings Ltd, which is incorporated in the Marshall Islands and has received more than $68 million in revenue since 2014 from dealings with Sibur, a Russian gas and petrochemicals company part owned by Kirill Shamalov, who is married to Putin’s daughter Katerina Tikhonova.
Ross divested himself of the majority of his business interests when he was appointed commerce secretary by Trump, a longtime friend, but maintained a stake in Navigator through a series of Cayman Islands entities.
Ashcroft, the Tory Party donor who has been identified as being one of those named in the hack, is also facing questions over his handling of the Punta Gorda Trust in Bermuda, in which he has hundreds of millions of dollars invested.
Usmanov, an Uzbek-Russian oligarch who owns 30 per cent of Arsenal, and Farhad Moshiri, a long-term business partner of Usmanov, who now owns a stake in Everton, were also named in the Paradise Papers, which allege that Usmanov gifted the money to Farhad, which he later invested in Everton, calling into question whether Premier League rules on owning a stake in more than one club.
Both men and Everton FC have denied any wrongdoing and say there are a number of inaccuracies in the documents.
The Paradise Papers were obtained by the German newspaper Su¨ddeutsche Zeitung and shared by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ).
The revelations come just a year after the release of the socalled ‘‘Panama Papers’’, in which the hidden millions of some of the world’s richest and most powerful were exposed, sparking the downfall of several governments around the world.
The latest revelations will increase pressure on the British government to crack down on legal tax avoidance schemes.
Meg Hillier, a Labour MP and chair of the UK Parliament’s public accounts committee, said: ‘‘If offshore was not secret then some of this stuff just couldn’t happen ... We need transparency and we need sunlight shone on this.’’