More secrets in Panama Papers
David Geffen and David Cameron are among the major figures now linked to the unfolding financial scandal.
Names from the 11.5 million documents that make up the Panama Papers continue to slosh out as the public wraps its head around a scandal that appears to expose details of how some of the world’s richest and most-powerful people concealed their wealth or avoided taxes. Many of the named figures deny wrongdoing.
Here are some of the latest names to surface:
David Cameron
After days of headlines about his family’s financial affairs, British Prime Minister David Cameron has acknowledged that he profited from his father’s investments in an offshore tax haven.
Cameron told ITV News on Thursday that he and his wife, Samantha, had sold shares worth 31,500 pounds (currently $44,300) in Blairmore Holdings in early 2010, before Cameron became prime minister.
There is no suggestion he acted illegally.
Mauricio Macri
An Argentine prosecutor confirmed Thursday that he had opened a formal investigation into President Mauricio Macri’s participation in an offshore investment vehicle set up by a law firm at the center of the so-called Panama Papers scandal to see whether the leader failed to properly disclose his involvement .
The prosecutor, Federico Delgado, told a Buenos Aires radio reporter that he was looking into allegations of possible illegal activity by Macri and other investors, including the president’s father, in a Bahamas-registered entity called Fleg Trading Ltd.
Macri is one of 20 prominent or wealthy Argentines, including several political leaders, identified so far as participants in offshore companies set up by the Mossack Fonseca law firm in Panama.
Four months into his administration, Macri has made cleaning up corruption a central goal of his administration.
David Geffen
Hollywood music and film mogul David Geffen is listed as the director of a Delaware company called Barham Maritime LLC, which in 2011 sold shares of his Cayman Islands company created to hold title to his yacht, called Pelorus. Shipfinder.com shows the yacht Pelorus is anchored in Miami.
The sale price for the yacht was $214 million, and it was sold to a Panama offshore company called Marfleet Limited S.A.
Mossack Fonseca lawyers reviewed the sale documents.
Geffen’s lawyer, Bertram Fields, said Geffen had “never used an offshore account for business or commercial purposes or as any kind of tax haven.”
Sanford Weill
Sanford Weill, 83, former chief executive and later chairman of Citigroup, appears as a shareholder in two companies — April Fool Ltd. and Brightao Corp.
He’s the sole shareholder in April Fool, a shell company in the British Virgin Islands. An associate of Weill’s who declined to be identified confirmed that the offshore was linked to a 200-foot yacht by the same name.
Brightao Corp. is an offshore company in the British Virgin Islands used as a vehicle through which investors hold shares in a Chinese insurance and risk-management firm called Mingya Insurance Brokers, the associate said.
Liesel Pritzker Simmons
Liesel Pritzker Simmons, a former child Hollywood star and heiress to the Hyatt hotels fortune, appears as a shareholder of a Panamanian shell company called Blue Valley Agroinvestment. Documents suggest investment in Colombia’s palm oil sector. One of the other shareholders is John Thompson Dorrance IV, a descendant of the family that created the Campbell Soup Co.
In a statement, Pritzker Simmons confirmed her stake in the company.
“My husband, Ian Simmons, and I are minority investors in Blue Valley Agroinvestment, a sustainable agriculture project in Colombia,” she said. “Any income we earn is fully taxed. We are proud of the job creation and community development this project brings to an underserved part of Colombia.”