UK PM under pressure over family wealth

london — Prime Minister David Cameron came under pressure to explain his family’s financial affairs on Tuesday after the socalled Panama Papers revealed his late father ran an offshore fund which avoided paying tax in Britain for 30 years.

A government source said that Cameron had no funds in offshore accounts or investments, but a spokesman said the issue of his family members’ holdings was a “private matter”.

The revelations are embarrassing for the prime minister, who has sought to lead international efforts to improve financial transparency and whose government is hosting an anti-corruption summit covering the issue next month.

Opposition Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn called for an investigation into the tax affairs of all those implicated in a massive leak of tax documents from Panamanian law firm Mossack Fonseca, including the Camerons.

“I think the prime minister, in his own interest, ought to tell us

I think the PM , in his own interest, ought to tell us exactly what’s been going on Jeremy Corbyn, British opposition Labour leader

exactly what’s been going on,” he said. Corbyn also suggested that London could impose direct rule on British overseas territories if they were revealed to have become places for “systematic evasion” of tax.

The prime minister’s father Ian Cameron helped found Blairmore Holdings Inc, an investment fund based in the Bahamas, in the early 1980s and was reportedly one of five UK-based directors until shortly before his death in 2010.

His offshore dealings were previously known, but the leaked documents revealed that the fund hired local residents to sign its paperwork to avoid paying tax in Britain. —