Release of offshore records draws worldwide response

Release of offshore records draws worldwide response
UPDATED 04/12: Global leaders respond to release of offshore records.

By Mar CabraMichael HudsonemailEmily MenkesKimberley Porteous

1:37 pm, April 10, 2013 Updated: 9:49 am, April 12, 2013

Secrecy for Sale





The existence of a global
network of sham company directors can now be revealed. In this series,
ICIJ's worldwide research which will identify, country-by-country,
thousands of the true owners of offshore companies.

Stories in this series



Release of offshore records draws worldwide response

By Mar Cabra, Michael Hudson, Emily Menkes and Kimberley Porteous

April 10, 2013



Top Malaysian politicians use offshore secrecy

By International Consortium of Investigative Journalists

April 9, 2013

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By Nicky Hager

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Highlights of offshore leaks so far

By Emily Menkes and Kimberley Porteous

April 9, 2013

ICIJ’s investigative series on offshore secrecy – which draws from a cache of 2.5 million secret records – has ignited reactions around the globe.


Since the initial release of stories by the ICIJ and its media
partners across the world, public officials have issued statements,
governments have launched investigations, and politicians and
journalists have been debating the implications of the records and the
reporting.


Among the latest reactions and responses:

• Russian Deputy Prime Minister Igor Shuvalov is moving his offshore assets back to Russia after ICIJ's revelations that Shuvalov's wife Olga Shuvalova was either a shareholder or owner of several secretive offshore entities. The Shuvalovs had a declared income of $12.7 million in 2011, most of which was earned by Olga.
  
• Spanish political party Unión Progreso y Democracia submitted written
  questions to the Spanish Congress today in the wake of French
  president François Hollande's announcement that French banks had to
  declare their tax haven subsidiaries. The questions read: Is the
  government going to present in the European institutions any initiative
  to eradicate the tax havens within the Member States? and Is the
  government going to force banks to announce the subsidiaries they have
  in tax havens and what are their activities?
  

• Francois Hollande: called for tax havens to be "eradicated."French president François Hollande called for "eradication" of the world's tax havens and told French banks they must declare all of their subsidiaries.
  He also announced the creation of a special prosecutor to pursue cases
  of corruption and tax fraud. French government ministers have been ordered to declare their assets publicly within days.
  
• Luxembourg's Prime Minister Jean-Claude Juncker announced his country plans to lift bank secrecy rules for European Union citizens who
  have savings based in the country, ending decades of bank secrecy in
  Luxembourg. "We are following a global movement," Juncker told
  parliament in a state-of-the-nation address. The new transparency regime
  would begin in January 2015. Austria is now the only EU country not
  sharing data about bank depositors. In a recent interview, Austrian Vice
  Chancellor and Finance Minister Spindelegger Fekter said: “How much
  money someone has in the bank is a matter between the bank and the
  customer and is no one else’s business."
  
• 
  Europe’s five biggest economic powers — Britain, France, Germany, Italy and Spain —announced they would begin regularly exchanging banking and tax information as a way of identifying tax dodgers and other financial wrongdoers.
  
• Meanwhile, the British Virgin Islands (BVI) government are not fans
  of the ICIJ investigation. The BVI premier and Finance Minister Orlando
  Smith told the South China Morning Post that "BVI
  authorities are actively investigating how this private information has
  been illicitly obtained and used to attack the BVI financial services
  industry, which operates compliantly within international guidelines and the law."
  
• Athens’ district attorney Panayota Fakou has started a preliminary probe to
  find out if Greeks who own offshore companies unearthed by the ICIJ
  investigation have evaded taxes or laundered money. According to the
  Greek newspaper Ta Nea, prosecutors will send information requests to
  British Virgin Islands’ financial authorities asking them to turn over
  records of 107 entities connected to Greek citizens.
  
• 
  An investigation by Finnish State Televisionand ICIJ exposing the
  offshore connections of state-owned postal company Itella has been
  received with surprise by the Finnish Finance Minister, Jutta
  Urpilainen. The minister said that “state owned companies should be an example for other companies.
  That is why it is especially unacceptable that Itella owns a company in
  a tax haven.” Urpilainen said the Finnish government should adopt clear
  rules on the use of offshore jurisdictions by state-owned corporations
  and called tax havens “one of the biggest threats to the Finnish welfare
  state.”
  

• Canada's national revenue minister Gail Shea says the government may pursue the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation in court to force it to share the offshore leaks records.
  
• Quebec Premier Pauline Marois has declared that neither she, nor
  any other elected officials in her government have dealings in the
  offshore world. Marois also supported the handover of internal documents to Canadian authorities, stating the Quebec government would not hesitate to use "all legal means" to ensure this.
  
• French budget minister Bernard Cazeneuve joins the clamor from
  governments around the globe in urging ICIJ and its media partners to
  release the offshore tax haven files to them, to "aid justice and help them do their job." Le Monde's response: "It is up to the justice system to establish responsibilities at a time when the law might have been broken ... It is up to the press to enlighten the reader..."
  
• Austrian Chancellor Werner Faymann says he is ready to make
  concessions on banking secrecy, to bring the nation in step
  with Switzerland and Luxembourg. "Austria should participate in talks on banking secrecy,” Austrian Chancellor Werner Faymann declared to Die Presse.
  
• The European Commissioner for Taxation, Algirdas Šemeta, called for
  an automatic exchange of information between countries and a "tough
  common stance." "Recent developments,fuelled
  by the outcome of the Offshore Leaks, confirms the urgency for more and
  better action against tax evasion .... Now it is time to put words into
  action." He said he was "very pleased" to see many of the Member
  States reviewing where they stand on the issues and "intensifying their
  political will to act."
  
• The Swiss government has distinguised itself from other world
  governments by publicly stating it does not want access to the offshore
  leaks records. Finance minister Eveline Widmer-Schlumpf said Switzerland
  has worked hard in recent years to curb fraud and tax evasion and that
  much of the activity pointed to in the leaked documents can be perfectly
  legal. She says the Swiss government does not want access to the data as "it was acquired illegally and Bern wants no part of that".
  
• The Philippine Presidential Commission on Good
  Government probe into the disclosure that Maria Imelda Marcos Manotoc,
  the eldest daughter of the late dictator Ferdinand Marcos, was a beneficiary of a secret offshore trust in the British Virgin Islands, will release its report within two weeks.
  “We are duty bound to investigate and, depending upon informed
  preliminary findings, decide whether to pursue the matter,” said Andres
  Bautista, the chairman of the Presidential Commission on Good
  Government, tasked with recovering the Marcos family’s alleged
  ill-gotten wealth.
  
• The president of the Association of German Banks denied that his
  group’s members had helped customers engage in tax evasion. “First in
  line are the individuals and the organizations that invest their money
  in tax oases,” Andreas Schmitz said."
  
• The Berne internal revenue service authorities announced they will re-open the Gunter Sachs case after ICIJ's revelations about the former Mr. Brigitte Bardot's intricate offshore scheme.
  
• In Canada, a Liberal senator urged his caucus colleague, Senator
  Pana Merchant, to answer questions in the wake of CBC News and ICIJ
  reports that she has been listed as beneficiary of an offshore trust created
  by her husband, a well-known class-action attorney. "We're all innocent
  until proven guilty in this country, but I want to hear her
  explanation," Senator Percy Downe told CBC News in an interview.
  
• In the Philippines, two lawmakers dismissed a report by an ICIJ media partner, the Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism (PCIJ), that they had offshore holdings. Senator Manuel Villar said
  his offshore entity was a “1-dollar shell company” that he wasn’t
  required to report, because he hadn’t made any real investment in it.
  Villar said that he hadn’t conducted business with the British Virgin
  Islands company “because I decided to concentrate in the Philippines.”
  Congressman Joseph Victor ‘JV’ G. Ejercito suggested the
  story about him was politically motivated. “To the best of my
  knowledge, I have truthfully and accurately declared all my assets,
  liabilities, and net worth” on required disclosures forms for public
  officials, he said in a statement.
  
• Germany's Economics Minister Philipp Rösler urged the media to pass the data on to the government, stressing that tax evasion was a "criminal act."
  

• Luxembourg's Finance Minister Luc Frieden says he is open to greater transparency of its banks in order to cooperate further with foreign tax authorities.
  
• The Indian Finance Minister P. Chidambaram said an inquiry had been initiated by the authorities against individuals whose names figured in
  the global media report. “Yes. We have taken note of the names and
  inquiries have been put in motion in respect of the names that have been
  exposed,” he told a press conference.
  

• The Mongolian Deputy Speaker, Sangikav Bayartsogt, admitted to an "ethics failure" over his undeclared million-dollar Swiss bank account.
  He told a press conference: “It is true that there is 1,658 Euros or
  2.9 million MNT in a Swiss bank account. I opened the account to trade
  in international stocks with three other acquaintances in 2008. My
  failure of responsibility is that I did not include the company in my
  declaration of income. I have admitted my ethic failure and I am ready
  to take responsibility."
  
• Philippine government officials said they will investigate evidence that Maria
  Imelda Marcos Manotoc, a provincial governor and daughter of the late
  dictator Ferdinand Marcos, was the beneficiary of a secret BVI offshore
  trust.
  
• George Mavraganis, the Deputy Finance Minister of Greece announced
  that the Greek government is moving to address offshore-driven tax
  dodging. Greek members of parliament asked Mavraganis what he planned to
  do about the 103 offshore companies that ICIJ found hadn’t been registered with Greece’s tax authorities.
  
• George Sourlas from Greece’s Ministry of Justice said the revenue
  loss caused by offshore was huge. “By the actions of offshore companies
  in Greece, the revenue loss to the Greek government is in the order of
  40% or more of the debt of our country,” Sourlas said. “The offshore
  companies cast a shadow at this time of great crisis, when some get rich
  and many get poor.”
  
• In France, President Francois Hollande denied knowledge of
  the offshore accounts held by his 2012 campaign manager, Jean-Jacques
  Augier, asserting that it’s up to the tax administration to monitor
  Augier’s private activities. Reports about Augier’s offshore dealings by
  Le Monde, the BBC and other ICIJ partners came in the wake of news
  about tax fraud charges against Hollande’s ex-budget Minister, Jerome Cahuzac.
  
• The office of Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev asserted there was nothing unusual about the information in the leak – which showed that his two daughters were shareholders of three offshore companies.
  The statement said the President’s daughters “are grown up and have the
  right to do business.” A spokesperson for Azersun – a holding company
  controlled by Hasan Gozal, a corporate mogul who was listed as the
  director of the daughters’ companies – said the report was biased and
  based on inaccurate information. “I regret that authority of Press
  Council doesn't go beyond Azerbaijan and there is no such institution
  worldwide to fight racketeer journalists,” the spokesman said.
  
• Ex-Colombian President Álvaro Uribe Vélez publicly defended his sons’ involvement in
  offshore business. Uribe stated that his sons Tomás and Jerónimo are
  entrepreneurs and “have participated in business dealings since they
  were children” and “they are not tax evaders.”
  
• In the UK, David Cameron is facing renewed pressure to take action over Britain’s entanglements within the offshore world.
  Lord Oakeshott, a senior Liberal Democrat said that the secrecy haven
  of the British Virgin Islands “stains the face of Britain.” Oakeshott
  and others are questioning whether Cameron will raise the issue in June
  of at the G8 summit of wealth nations. "How can David Cameron keep a
  straight face calling for the G8 to make big business pay tax when we
  let the BVI use British law and British protection to suck in billions
  in dirty money?" Oakeshott asked.
  
• 
  German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schäuble stated on public radio that he was “pleased”with
  the ICIJ reports. He went on to say, “I think that such things as have
  been made known will increase the pressure internationally, and we will
  be able to increase the cooperation with those who have been more
  reticent”, a sentiment reflected in Germany’s previous lobbying to stamp
  out tax avoidance.
  
• Canadian Federal Revenue Minister Gail Shea called the released of offshore banking information as “good news” for Canadians and bad news for tax evaders. Ms. Shea urged ICIJ or anyone else with information on tax cheats to come forward.
  
• Pascal Saint-Amans, director of the Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development, said: "Secrecy is no longer acceptable. We need to get rid of it. If the rules make it possible, then we'll change the rules.”
  

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Finance, Business and Finance, Business, International taxation, Offshore finance, Tax haven, Tax, Money, Anti-globalization, Wolfgang Schäuble, Itella, Jutta Urpilainen, Offshore financial centre

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