Tory chairman’s secret offshore film firm

THE Conservative Party’s co-chairman owned an offshore company that indirectly benefited from UK tax relief, the leaked documents also reveal.

Ben Elliot, the Duchess of Cornwall’s nephew, set up the secretly-held firm in the British Virgin Islands to partfinance a cricket film which was shown to the Prime Minister in Downing Street in July last year. The revelations in the Pandora Papers come after the close associate of Boris Johnson was embroiled in a cash-foraccess row over claims he arranged an audience with Prince Charles for a party donor. Mr Elliot, 46, pictured, set up E&G Productions in the tax haven with Ben Goldsmith, the financier brother of Tory minister and peer Zac. The firm was used to channel a £600,000 loan into a UK subsidiary company in 2008 to finance Fire in Babylon, a film about the West Indies cricket team of the 70s and 80s. Although the documentary made a £70,000 loss, the UK firm was granted tax credits of £121,000 between 2009 and 2011, The Guardian reported. Old Etonian Mr Elliot and Mr Goldsmith said they set up the firm in the British Virgin Islands as they initially assumed investors would come from the Caribbean. But most of those who eventually contributed were UK-based.

Although there is no suggestion of anything illegal, the revelations will prove embarrassing for the Conservatives.

A spokesman for Mr Elliot and Mr Goldsmith said: ‘The film was made by a UK company and subject to UK taxation. All taxes have been correctly and transparently declared to the relevant authorities.’ Mr Goldsmith said he wasn’t sure if the friends still owned the firm but it had solely been set up to finance the film.

He added: ‘We didn’t garner any advantages. And we put our name all over the whole thing. I don’t think it even really occurred to me where it was set up ...’