Time online India 07 Nov 2017
The Indian government has launched an investigation into offshore assets and bank accounts of over 700 Indian individuals and entities disclosed in the Paradise Papers released by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ).
The Indian names include Bollywood superstar Amitabh Bachchan, liquor baron businessman Vijay Mallya, corporate lobbyist Niira Radia, film star Sanjay Dutt's wife Dilnashin (now known as Manyata) Union minister Jayant Sinha and Rajya Sabha MP RK Sinha.
The Central Board of Direct Taxes (CBDT) announced that the multi-agency group probing the Panama Papers leak will also monitor the investigations on the Paradise Papers on financial holdings abroad.
Bollywood superstar Amitabh Bachchan has written a reflective blog post on how the media reports allegations against him and how he chooses to respond to them.
The post appeared just hours before media publications went live with the Paradise Papers leak.
The post began with a reference to recent reports that he had been served notices by Mumbai's municipal body over alleged illegal construction in the city, that the actor says he is 'yet to see'.
'If there is accusation, at times, I would prefer to correct the manner… at times it is prudent to remain quiet,' he said.
'On matters such as the one in question, it shall be the agency, the system that shall resolve it… not media.'
Bachchan also talks about the Bofors scandal and how the actor and his family were 'grilled, declared traitors, abused and humiliated for several years'.
He writes that 'we moved court in the United Kingdom' against a UK paper and won.
He says those who levelled allegations against him never approached the courts to 'verify or justify their allegation'.
'Almost 25 years later, one of the chief prosecutors of the country that was involved in the matter, stated through a public platform that our names were asked to be planted in the scandal,' the actor wrote.
theguardian Dated 06 Nov 2017
Wilbur Ross denied on Monday that he had done anything wrong after revelations from the Paradise Papers that he has significant investments in a shipping company that does business with Vladmir Putin’s son-in-law and his sanctioned inner circle.
As one leading Democratic senator called for Ross to explain himself clearly or resign, the US commerce secretary blamed the media for making “a lot more out of it than it deserves”.
Speaking to the BBC on a visit to London, Ross said that he had declared his interests earlier this year when he joined Trump’s administration.
“There is nothing wrong with it. The fact that it happens to be called a Russian company doesn’t mean there is any evil in it,” Ross said.
Leaked documents show Ross holds a stake in a shipping company, Navigator, via a chain of offshore investments. Navigator has a lucrative partnership with Sibur, a Moscow-based gas and petrochemicals company, which charters Navigator’s vessels.
TIME reports 7th Nov 2017
A leak of more than 13 million documents pertaining to wealth stored in offshore tax havens has revealed information on tens of thousands of the world’s wealthiest companies and people, including high-profile figures from U.S. Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross, to the Queen of England.
The documents — tagged as “Paradise Papers” — were obtained by German newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung and shared with almost 100 media partners around the world by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ), an international consortium of journalists.
The scale of the leak rivals that of last year’s Panama Papers which laid bare 11.5 million financial documents for public scrutiny. According to the ICIJ, that exposé resulted in an estimated $135 billion being wiped off the value of nearly 400 companies, the recuperation of over $110 million worth of unpaid taxes, and at least 150 inquiries, audits or investigations by police, customs, financial crime and mafia prosecutors.
Like its 2016 predecessor, the disclosure of the Paradise Papers sheds light on the complex structures the global elite use to obfuscate their financial dealings. While the use of offshore accounts is not in and of itself illegal, it is sometimes linked to money laundering and tax avoidance.
Here’s what else to know about the Paradise Papers:
What has been leaked?
The Paradise Papers comprise of 13.4 million files leaked from two offshore service providers and 19 tax havens’ company registries. In the eye of the storm is a law firm called Appleby, which has branches in Bermuda, the Cayman Islands, the British Virgin Islands, the Isle of Man, Jersey and Guernsey. Unlike Mossack Fonseca, the firm at the center of the Panama Papers leak, Appelby is a member of the reputed legal “magic circle” and says it has always operated within the law.
“Appleby has thoroughly and vigorously investigated the allegations and we are satisfied that there is no evidence of any wrongdoing, either on the part of ourselves or our clients,” the company said in a statement issued a fortnight before the papers were made public.
What are the biggest stories to emerge so far ?
Trump’s commerce secretary invested in a Russian firm with links to Putin: When President Donald Trump picked Wilbur Ross as his Commerce Secretary, the 79-year-old divested most of his business interests. But Ross maintains a stake in a NYSE-listed shipping company called Navigator, which has convoluted links to Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Since 2014, Navigator — which Ross invests in through a chain of companies in the Cayman Islands — has collected more than $68 million for services rendered to Moscow-based gas and petrochemicals giant called Sibur. That company is part-owned by Russia’s youngest billionaire Kirill Shamalov, who also happens to be Vladimir Putin’s son-in-law. Shamalov is not under U.S. sanctions but his father Nikolai, a longtime friend of Putin, is. In 2014, the U.S. and the European Union penalized him in response to Russia’s aggression in Ukraine and subsequent annexation of Crimea.
In short, the U.S. Commerce Secretary stands to benefit from the operations of a company closely connected to people under U.S. sanctions. Democrats are now saying Ross misled Congress about the nature of his investments.
In an interview with the Guardian, Daniel Fried, an assistant secretary of state for European and Eurasian affairs under George W. Bush said that Ross’s connections with “cronies of Putin” threatened to undermine U.S. measures to reign in Russian aggression. “I don’t understand why anybody would decide to maintain this kind of relationship going into a senior government position,” Fried said. “What is he thinking?”
The disclosure comes amid special counsel Robert Mueller’s ongoing investigation into allegations of collusion between Russia and the Trump administration. In response to questions posed by the New York Times, a spokesman for Ross said the Commerce Secretary had never met the oligarchs behind Sibur and that he “recuses himself from any matters focused on transoceanic shipping vessels.” The spokesman added that Ross had been generally supportive the administration’s sanctions of Russian. In a later interview with CNBC, Ross said there was “nothing wrong with anything that was done” and called allegations that he had deceived his stake in Navigator “totally wrong.”
Russian state companies used a business associate of Jared Kushner to invest in U.S. social media: Two Kremlin-linked companies have funneled hundreds of millions of dollars into Facebook and Twitter through a business associate of Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner, according to the leaked documents.
The Paradise Papers show that the financial arm of state-run Gazprom, and Russia’s VTB Bank poured funds into two investment vehicles that in turn purchased about $1billion worth of shares in Facebook and $191 million in shares of Twitter in or around 2011. Those investment vehicles are owned by a Russian technology mogul named Yuri Milner, who also has an $850,000 stake in a startup co-founded by Kushner.
Milner — who has in the past advised the Russian government on technology — denies the U.S. social media giants were made aware the money for his funds’ investments came from Russian state-owned enterprises. In interviews after the publication of the papers he said that VTB Bank’s investment did not buy it influence at Twitter and that he was not aware Gazprom Investholding had backed the Facebook stake. He has also downplayed his relationship with Kushner, saying he had only met the U.S. President’s son-in-law once.
Before initially investing in Facebook in 2009, Milner worked a stint at the World Bank and then established the Russian social media service Mail.ru. The tech entrepreneur, who is a friend of Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg and attended his California wedding, has lived in the U.S. with his family since 2014.
Facebook and Twitter have pushed back against accusations of lapses in their due diligence. In a statement, Facebook noted that the investment vehicle Gazprom used had been a “passive investor” with no voting rights or board seat, and that its stake had been sold five years ago.
The leak comes amid an ongoing investigation into covert Russian meddling the run up to and after the U.S. Presidential Elections. A Senate intelligence hearing last week revealed that Russian electoral disinformation had reached 126 million people on Facebook alone. Senator Dianne Feinstein called the online manipulation of Americans the “beginning of cyberwarfare.”
The Queen of England has investments in a business the exploits poor families in Britain: The private estate of Great Britain’s Queen Elizabeth II has invested millions of pounds in previously undisclosed funds based in the Cayman islands and other offshore jurisdictions. Some of that money has boosted the coffers of a business that has been criticized for preying on financially vulnerable families.
The Paradise Papers show that through the Cayman Islands fund, the Duchy of Lancaster — the body responsible for managing the royal investment portfolio — invested an undisclosed sum in a company called BrightHouse. Britain’s largest rent-to-own retailer, BrightHouse supplies goods like TVs and refrigerators to families under a high-cost credit scheme. Earlier this year Britain’s financial regulator said the company had not acted as a “responsible lender” and ordered it to pay £14.8m ($19million) to almost 250,000 customers.
The Duchy of Lancaster invested in BrightHouse in 2005, before the retailer was criticized for exploiting poor families, and said it had no idea it had a stake in the company until it was approached by reporters, according to the Guardian. It also denies the British Monarch gained a tax advantage by investing in a Cayman Islands-based fund. Still, the level of oversight the royal estate applies to making sure its investments are ethical, and the use of offshore funds more broadly, is in question.
At the time of its most recent filing in March the duchy reportedly managed £519million ($678million) in assets.
Trudeau’s money man may have used tax havens: The latest disclosures reveal that the chief fundraiser to Canada’s Prime Minister Justin Trudeau might have shuttled millions of dollars between offshore jurisdictions to legally avoid paying taxes in the U.S., Canada and Israel.
Stephen Bronfman, a scion of one of Canada’s wealthiest families, is accredited with transforming the Liberal Party into a financial juggernaught and propelling Trudeau to its premiership in 2013. Promoted to chief fundraiser for the party, he was instrumental in helping Trudeau win Canada’s 2015 federal election.
But tax experts say that some transactions allegedly undertaken by Bronfman’s private-investment company Claridge may have breached tax rules in using a series of shell companies and other entities to move money around.
A lawyer representing the Bronfman family told the ICIJ and the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation that “none of the transactions or entities at issue were affected or established to evade or even avoid taxation” and that they “were always in full conformity with all applicable laws and requirements.”
Any “suggestion of false documentation, fraud, ‘disguised’ conduct, tax evasion or similar conduct is false, and a distortion of the facts,” the lawyer added.
A spokesman for Trudeau declined to comment but the revelations about Bronfman could be a political liability for the Prime Minister, whose electioneering platform of reducing inequality and going after tax dodgers had resonated with the Canadian public.
Daily The Telegraph (UK) reports dated 08 Nov 2017
When the Panama Papers were released in 2016, they thrust a spotlight on the tax affairs of the rich and powerful.
Some 18 months later, the so-called Paradise Papers have yet again brought the matter under global scrutiny - and feature high-profile players from much closer to home.
The disclosure of 13.4 million previously-secret documents ties major companies and political figures to secretive overseas arrangements.
The majority of the leaked Paradise Papers come from Appleby, which specialises in offshore accounts.
Here is a summary of some the names that have emerged from the papers:
The Queen
The Duchy of Lancaster, the private estate of the Queen, was found to have millions of pounds invested in offshore arrangements.
Around £10million from the Queen's private fund was paid into funds in the Cayman Islands and Bermuda between 2004 and 2005, according to reports.
A spokesman for the estate said all investments were "fully audited and legitimate".
The Prince of Wales
The Duchy of Cornwall paid 113,500 dollars (£58,000) in 2007 for 50 shares in Bermuda-registered Sustainable Forestry Management (SFM).
Following the purchase, Charles lobbied for a change to two climate change deals that would have directly benefited the business, the BBC and the Guardian reported.
A spokesman for Clarence House denied that Charles had spoken out to benefit financially.
Lewis Hamilton
World champion racing driver Lewis Hamilton reportedly avoided tax on his UK Pounds 16.5 million private jet after it was imported into the Isle of Man in 2013, according to the BBC.
A spokesman for the Mercedes driver said that everything was "above board".
Bono
U2 frontman Bono is alleged to have used a company based in Malta, a low tax jurisdiction, to pay for a share in a shopping centre based in Lithuania.
The leaked papers reportedly reveal that Bono, under his real name Paul Hewson, was an investor in the Maltese company Nude Estates which bought the shopping centre.
The Irish singer said: "I've been assured by those running the company that it is fully tax compliant, but if that is not the case I want to know as much as the tax office does, and so I also welcome the audit they have said they will undertake."
Lord Ashcroft
Former Conservative treasurer Lord Ashcroft is said to have remained a "non-dom" after joining the House of Lords, and was domiciled in Belize for tax purposes at a time it was widely believed he had given up on the status.
He has insisted he did not ignore rules in relation to the Punta Gorda Trust.
Mrs Brown's Boys actors
Three stars of the BBC sitcom Mrs Brown's Boys allegedly put more than 2 million pounds into companies in Mauritius as part of a tax avoidance scheme.
Patrick Houlihan, Martin Delany and Fiona O'Carroll took funds received from the production company owned by creator and star of the show, Brendan O'Carroll, and transferred them overseas, the BBC reported.
Mr O'Carroll told the broadcaster neither he nor his companies had been involved in a tax avoidance scheme or structure.
The three could not be contacted for comments but Mr Houlihan, who plays Dermot, had seemed confused over the scheme and told the Irish Times that he had not intended to avoid tax but simply control it. He said he was contacted by the BBC's Panorama about the scheme, adding: "I was surprised and I hung up. Afterwards I had to Google tax avoidance to see what it meant."
Wilbur Ross
Donald Trump's commerce secretary Wilbur Ross is accused of withholding details of his involvement with shipping firm Navigator when disclosing his financial affairs to a Senate committee earlier this year.
The leaked papers show the billionaire industrialist retains an interest in Navigator Holdings, one of whose most important business relationships is with energy firm Sibur, which is controlled by figures close to Vladimir Putin.
But he told reporters during a trade visit to London it would be "incorrect" to characterise Navigator's relationship with Sibur, a gas company co-owned by Kirill Shamalov, who is married to Mr Putin's daughter, as a partnership of any kind.
Stephen Bronfman
The chief fundraiser and senior adviser to Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau, Stephen Bronfman is being linked to offshore schemes that may have cost Canada millions of dollars in taxes.
According to the BBC, the leaks suggest that Mr Bronfman's investment firm, Claridge, had moved millions offshore for the Kolber family for more than 20 years.
Apple
Tech giant Apple is alleged to have rearranged its affairs, moving the firm holding most of its untaxed overseas cash to Jersey, after changes were made to controversial Irish tax practices, the BBC and Guardian said.
Apple said its new structure did not reduce tax payments in any country and "ensured that our tax obligation to the United States was not reduced".
Where has this data come from?
Much of the new trove of files includes bank statements, emails and loan agreements from Appleby, a firm which helps clients set up in overseas jurisdictions with low or zero tax rates.
Responding to the leak on Sunday, Appleby said there was"no evidence" that it had done anything wrong.
But campaigners argue this falls short of the desire to have increased transparency, including David Cameron's previously stated intentions for such registers to be publicly available.
Responding to the papers, Liberal Democrat leader and former business secretary Sir Vince Cable accused Mr Cameron of failing to clamp down on off-shore tax havens.
'mail online' reports dated 10 Nov 2017
Madonna and Weinstein bought shares in Bermuda-based companies, while Timberlake and Kidman set up and registered companies to buy property in the Bahamas.
There is no suggestion that any of these celebrities acted illegally.
Disgraced pervert Harvey Weinstein bought 2,000 shares of medical venture capital firm Scientia Health Group Ltd in 2001, the documents leaked from law firm Appleby show.
American TV personality Martha Stewart also invested in Scientia and also in another Bermuda-based firm, biopharmaceutical company ImColone. She sold $230,000 worth of shares in that company in December 2001.
Similarly, Madonna purchased 2,000 shares in the Bermuda-based company SafeGard Medical Ltd in 1998.
The singer is named in the small print of the papers as 'Ciccone, Madonna' (Ciccone being her last name). The company, which produced syringes, was dissolved in 2013.
There is no capital duty on the issue of shares in Bermuda and no tax on dividend income.
Justin Timberlake created a limited company in August 2015 with his accountant Michael Dreyer as manager.
Four months later he moved to register it in the Bahamas to 'engage in the purchase of real estate,' according to the papers.
Meanwhile, Nicole Kidman registered her and her husband Keith Urban's limited liability company in the Bahamas in March 2015, to secure 'ownership of interests in real property,' the papers say.
The tax on the increased value of properties bought through a US-based limited liability company registered in the Bahamas can be treated as capital gains, resulting in an effective rate of 23.8 per cent.
Properties bought by a Bahamian entity face individual levels of US tax on the value increase which can be up to 39.6 per cent.
A spokesman for Kidman and Urban told The Guardian that tax was irrelevant to the way they structured their affairs. The other celebrities have been contacted by MailOnline and are yet to comment.
MailOnline yesterday reported that Shakira transferred £30million in musical rights to an offshore firm in Malta.
The Colombian-born singer is the latest celebrity revealed to use abroad tax havens after 1.34million papers were leaked to the German press this week.
Malta Tournesol Limited, the star's company, is based on the Mediterranean island of Malta, known for its tax incentives.
On the papers, Shakira is listed as a Bahamas resident, despite living Barcelona with her footballer boyfriend Gerard Pique.
Her lawyer was keen to stress all activity was legal and in accordance with laws.
Shakira's lawyer Ezequiel Camerini told Spanish website El Confidential: 'The Maltese company Tournesol Limited fulfils all legal requirements to operate as such. All of the corresponding information relative to this entity is public and transparent.'
While admitting that Shakira lives in Barcelona, the lawyer justified her residence in a tax haven explaining that 'as an international artist she has resided at different locations throughout her professional career and, in every case, has fully met the laws of all the jurisdictions where she has resided.'
The website reported the company's capital was just under £3million pounds but the associated share premium corresponding to the musical assets and trademarks had been valued at €31.6 million (£27.8 million).
El Confidential was one of the nearly 100 media organisations involved in sifting through information obtained by German newspaper Suddeutsche Zeitung following a share with the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists.
Queen Elizabeth II, Prince Charles and U2 frontman Bono have all been named in the Paradise Papers, which have thrust the spotlight back on the tax affairs of the rich and powerful 18 months after the Panama Papers.
It emerged yesterday that the Duke of Westminster's estimated £9.35 billion estate, which has been passed on between the generations, has included holdings in Bermuda and Panama.
The finances of James Sassoon, a Tory member of the House of Lords who is related to a famous war poet, have also come under scrutiny.
Until around 1999, the Duke of Westminster's Grosvenor International Holdings Ltd had assets worth more than £600 m with 42 per cent of its shares held by screen companies in the tax havens.
Two offshore companies, incorporated in 1964 and 1977 respectively, held shares in GIHL, the paper reported, before Grosvenor bought them both out for £40 million in 2007.
Questions were asked when it emerged Gerald Grosvenor, who died from a heart attack aged 64 in August last year, left a personal estate of £743.4 million, reduced to £616.4 million after debts and liabilities.
The rest of his estimated £9billion estate appears to have been in family trusts which were passed on to his only son Hugh, 26, now the 7th Duke of Westminster.
As with nearly all of those highlighted in the Paradise Papers, there is no suggestion that any rules were broken.