PM’s father ‘used Panama law firm’
THE Prime Minister’s father was among those named last night in a huge leak of documents exposing the use of offshore tax regimes.
The late Ian Cameron, a stockbroker and multi-millionaire, helped run a network of offshore investment firms to build up his family fortune – a claim first reported in 2012.
Last night he was named as a client of law firm Mossack Fonseca in Panama, where his wealth was said to be shielded from UK taxes.
At the time of his death in late 2010, Ian Cameron left a fortune of £2.7 million in his will, from which the Prime Minister received £ 300,000. UK residents would ordinarily have to pay tax on any profits they repatriated, and there was nothing to suggest the Camerons did not, according to The Guardian.
In 2009 the compilers of the Sunday Times Rich List estimated Ian Cameron’s wealth at £10million.
He was said to have been ‘instrumental’ in setting up the entirely legal Panamanian company Blairmore Holdings in 1982, which was exempt from UK tax.
The fund shares its name with the family’s ancestral home in Aberdeenshire, Blairmore House, in which Ian Cameron was born in 1932 but which the family no longer owns. Mossack Fonseca registered the investment fund in Panama even though many of its key investors were British.