Daily Mirror (Northern Ireland)
Madge: Materialistic Girl
Singer is named as investor in tax havens as scandal widens
POP superstar Madonna has taken centre stage in the Paradise Papers tax scandal.
The singer – along with celebrities including Justin Timberlake and Nicole Kidman – has been named in the leaked documents that have exposed the use of tax havens by public figures.
Stars have now been implicated in a number of ways, from opening companies in countries where tax laws are less stringent to storing a large amount of earnings in offshore bank accounts.
Disgraced movie mogul Harvey Weinstein has also been named.
There is no suggestion any of the tax avoidance exposed by the documents is illegal. But there is public outrage about what the rich and famous have done.
Ian Dooley said online: “All the celebrities dodging the tax and getting away with it. I do a bit of overtime... and the tax man gets half off it. Absolute joke.”
US star Madonna, estimated to be worth £420million, and alleged rapist Weinstein, 65, invested in Bermuda-based companies.
Madonna, 59, purchased 2,000 shares in Safegard Medical Ltd in 1998.
The singer, full name Madonna Louise Ciccone, is named in the papers as “Ciccone, Madonna”.
The documents, leaked from Bermuda law firm
Appleby, show Weinstein, worth about £206million, bought 2,000 shares in Scientia Health Group Ltd in 2001. Timberlake and Kidman have been found to have registered firms to buy property in the Bahamas. US singer Timberlake, 36, created a limited company in America. The Paradise Papers,
dubbed the Parasite Papers, show the firm was launched with Timberlake, worth £176million, as its sole member and an accountant as manager.
Four months after setting it up, Timberlake moved to register it as a foreign firm in the Bahamas.
Australian/us actress Kidman, 50, registered her and husband Keith Urban’s US company in the Bahamas in 2015, to secure “ownership of interests” in property, the papers say. It would allow the pair, thought to be worth £157million, to pay tax at a rate of 23.8% on property bought and then sold, rather than up to 39.6% if the business was based in the US.
Kidman and singer Urban, 50, have said tax was irrelevant to the way they structured their affairs.
Other celebrities have yet to comment on the leaks.
Shamed US businesswoman Martha Stewart, 76, has also been named. The TV personality, once worth about £1.5billion, invested in Scientia and in another Bermuda-based firm Imclone.
In 2004 she served five months in jail after she was convicted of lying to investigators about why she sold around £176,000 of Imclone stock in 2001 just before the price plunged.
At Appleby’s office in Bermuda’s capital Hamilton, a spokeswoman told the Mirror yesterday no one was available for comment. Pop star Shakira, 40, was revealed on Tuesday to have transferred £30million in musical rights to an offshore firm in Malta.
One Twitter user said yesterday: “The #Paradisepapers is disgusting, not minor celebs but key people, whose tax would help the poor.”