Panama Papers: Lawyer hired by Nigeria to track Abacha loot has 178 firms in tax havens
Enrico Monfrini, a Swiss attorney hired by the administration of
former President Olusegun Obasanjo to track missing Abacha loot in Swiss
banks is himself operating over 178 companies in offshore tax havens, a
massive leak of secret documents belonging to offshore shell companies
has revealed.
Mr. Monfrini was hired in 2000 by the then new civilian government of
the country to help establish the existence of and repatriate over $4
billion allegedly looted by former military dictator, Sani Abacha.
The documents showed that Mr. Monfrini, an influential legal
practitioner in Switzerland, is director of 178 companies scattered
around Panama and the British Virgin Islands.
The revelations are among the findings of a lengthy investigation by
the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, German
newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung and more than 100 other global news
organizations.
Although the documents did not directly implicate Mr. Monfrini as
having committed any crime, still, the revelation points to the
hypocrisy of a man widely revered for his remarkable ability to
dismantle tax evaders and looters across jurisdictions.
Mr. Monfrini is a founding partner of Monfrini Crettol &
Associates, one of the most recognised legal services providers in
Switzerland.
In 2000, Mr. Obasanjo hired Mr. Monfrini’s firm to help recover
Abacha loot, which was estimated to be more than $4 billion at the time.
According to Mr. Obasanjo, Mr. Monfrini helped the Nigerian government secure the release of N267 billion–$1.34 billion.
As at December 2010, Mr. Monfrini was the director of the following offshore companies in tax havens:
Director of 17 PMA (Panama) company in ACT status.
Director of 3 BVI company (British Virgin Island) in ACT status.
Director of 1 PMA company in CAR status (to others)
Director of 38 PMA company in DIS status
Director of 1 BVI in DIS status.
Director of 44 PMA company in INA status.
Director of 65 PMA company in MOR status.
Director of 6 BVI company in MOR status.
Director of 3 PMA company in REN status.
Mr. Monfrini could not be reached to comment for this story.
The excitement mounts as The Voice Nigeria premieres on the 10th of April
Internationally renowned franchise The Voice which has won audiences in
countries like Australia, US, South Africa and the UK is finally here in
Nigeria! Viewers in Nigeria and across Africa can enjoy the amazing
show which also gives an amazing platform to talented individuals to
showcase their talent to the world.
The Regional Director, M-Net West Africa, Wangi Mba-Uzoukwu, said:
“ We are delighted to bring The Voice Nigeria to our Nigerian and
African viewers. The show will be no different from all the other
international adaptations and our viewers can expect the very best of
television entertainment even as we wait to discover the next generation
of talented singers! chairs. The Voice Nigeria employs the same format
including a panel of four coaches (Tu Face, Waje, Timi Dakolo and
Patoranking) who critique the contestants’ performances. The coaches
will then guide their teams of selected artistes through the remainder
of the season whilst also competing to ensure that their talent wins the
competition.
You can catch all the excitement on Africa Magic Showcase DStv Ch151
and Africa Magic Urban DStv Ch153 Sundays at 7pm from the 10th of April.
And how amazing is this: You can also download the The Voice Nigeria app
which is now available on IOS and Google stores. With the app, you get
to stay in on the thrills of The Voice Nigeria!
Be sure to join our hosts Ik Osakioduwa and Stephanie Coker as they
bring their magic and infectious energy on The Voice Nigeria.
The Voice Nigeria is brought to you by Africa Magic and proudly
sponsored by Airtel (the smartphone network) in association with
Coca-Cola (share a coke, share a feeling)
FIFA President Denies Connections With Leaked Panama Papers
FIFA
President, Gianni Infantino, has denied wrongdoing after leaked Panama
papers suggested he signed off on a contract with two businessmen who
have since been accused of bribery by the FBI.
Hugo and Mariano Jinkis bought TV rights for UEFA Champions League
football and immediately sold them on for almost three times the price.
The 2006 contract was signed off by Infantino when he was a UEFA Director.
Infantino says he is “dismayed” that his “integrity is being doubted”.
News of the contract came to light after 11 million documents were leaked from the Panamanian law firm, Mossack Fonseca.
The offices of European football’s governing body were searched by
Swiss police after ex-Secretary-General, Gianni Infantino was named in
papers leaked from the Panamanian law firm.
Meanwhile UEFA says it is giving police all relevant documents in its possession.
Boko Haram: FG to complete reconstruction of UN building by October
The
Federal Government has reassured that it will meet the October 2016
deadline for the repair of the United Nations building that was bombed
by insurgents in 2013.
This assurance was given Wednesday by the
Minister of Budget and National Planning, Senator Udoma Udo Udoma, while
playing host to a delegation led by the United Nations Resident
Coodinator and United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) Resident
Representative in Nigeria, Ms Fatma Samoura, Wednesday in his office.
While
assuring that the present government is very security conscious, he
added that terrorism, has been curtailed and Nigeria is a safer place
today.
In
response to the plight of about 1,900 UN Staff that are presently
suffering office accommodation inconveniences, Udoma stated that the
Federal Government is sorry about the present UN Office accommodation
inconvenience.
“I shall effectively liaise with the Federal
Capital Territory Administration and Ministry of Foreign Affairs to
ensure that the October 2016 rebuilding deadline of the Nigeria’s UN
building is met, all that is required for the staff to move into the
building will be addressed,” he assured.
Kaduna has more gold than South Africa – Gov El-Rufai
Governor
of Kaduna state, Nasir El-Rufai, has revealed that the state has more
gold than South Africa and could attract as much as N40 billion in
revenue if harnessed.
Speaking at the opening of the Kaduna
Economic and Investment Forum in the state, on Wednesday, he revealed
that the state was leveraging on its agricultural prowess to provide
interest free loans for farmers in the state adding that the investment
in mining gold would also be focused on the local miners.
“On
solid minerals, you’ve seen the presentation, the minerals we have in
Kaduna, but they missed out a very important mineral: gold,” he said.
“We’ve
just confirmed that Kaduna state, indeed Birnin Gwari local government
alone, has more gold than South Africa. This is proven, this is
verifiable; we have all the data and we are collaborating with the
federal ministry of solid mineral.
“To ensure that we bring
international companies that would invest billions of naira in Birnin
Gwari, to exploit our gold and export it, so that Kaduna state and
Nigeria gets the benefits.
“But more than that, these companies,
would also take the local miners, and formalise them and train them, so
that they would all continue to make money.
“This is the model we are pursuing and we think about 40 billion would be attracted in solid minerals.”
“We
have put in our budget, our intent to borrow N2.1 billion from the
central bank for the rice anchor programme. The anchor borrowing
programme enables the state government to access funds from the central
bank at one percent interest.
“The state government has decided
that our farmers would get these monies interest free. So we have put in
the budget, the interest component of the anchor borrowing project. We
pay the interest.
“We are also doing N5 billion naira for ginger
production in Kaduna. We have putting N5 billion to triple ginger
production, we have the best ginger in the world.
“We also were
the first state to introduce the treasury single account and here I must
express my gratitude to the World Bank, the IMF and the central bank,
for giving us the technical assistance that made us implement the
treasury single account in less than two months. It’s a world record.
“Essentially,
we moved from 470 government accounts, to one account. 124 MDAs
complied, and as at the 31st of August, we had nearly 25 billion in our
TSA, which was a sort of record.”
Buhari to embark on state visit to China next week
In
a statement issued in Abuja on Tuesday by the China Ambassador to
Nigeria, Gu Xiaojie, he said the visit would be Buhari’s first visit to
China since he came to office last May.
He said President Buhari
would be the first African Head of State to visit China after the Forum
on China-Africa Cooperation (FOCAC) Johannesburg Summit, which is of
great importance to both China-Nigeria and China-Africa relations, and
draws great attention from both countries and Africa.
‘’Distance
cannot separate true friends who feel so close even when they are
thousands of miles apart. The China-Nigeria friendship has stood the
test of time and became stronger and more vigorous despite the vast
oceans between the two countries.
‘’On February 10, 1971, China
and Nigeria established diplomatic relationship, and ever since then,
the bilateral relations have been developing smoothly and steadily,’’
the ambassador said.
He added that in April 2005, China and
Nigeria, the most populous developing countries in the world and Africa,
declared the establishment of strategic partnership, which lifted the
bilateral ties to a new high and sounded the clarion call to form an
all-directional, multi-layered and wide-ranging cooperation.
“Since
then, the pragmatic cooperation in various fields between the two
countries have been leading in many ways in China’s cooperation with
African countries, featuring fruitful achievements and exemplary
highlights,’’ he added.
The ambassador further stated that in
recent years, China had witnessed frequent high-level exchanges between
Nigeria and his country, saying the political mutual trust has been
enhanced continuously.
He added: “In 2014, Chinese Premier, Li
Keqiang, visited Nigeria and reached extensive consensus with Nigerian
leaders. Last year, Chinese President Xi Jinping, met with Nigerian
president twice, exchanged views on bilateral relations and issues of
common concern, reached wide-ranging agreements and charted the
direction of future development of China-Nigeria relations.
‘’Economically,
the cooperation between China and Nigeria in various areas such as
infrastructure, energy, trade and finance, has scored impressive
achievements. Nigeria is the first African country to accept Chinese RMB
in its foreign reserve.
‘’Last year, the bilateral trade volume
stood at $14.94 billion, which represented 8.3 per cent of the total
trade volume between China and Africa, and 42 per cent of the total
trade volume between China and ECOWAS countries.’’
Xiaojie said
Nigeria remains China’s No.1 engineering contract market, No.2 export
market, No.3 trading partner, and major investment destination in
Africa, adding that China has invested a total of over $2.5 billion in
Nigeria.
The fuel situation in Nigeria has made some people to discover their innate abilities. Look at Mallam Yusuf what he discovered of himself this period. What do you have to offer?
Paul Ryan: A Very Dangerous Man. Can His Theory Work?
Paul Ryan who talks about poor people and budgets sometimes, is
widely considered the face of compassionate conservatism. He's the lovable Republican, who cares in theory about poverty. What
Today’s enactment of the Department of Labor’s fiduciary rule, which
protects regular people from being swindled by financial advisors, is an
opportune time to reflect on the fact that Paul Ryan led the opposition to this rule,
meaning that he is in favor of regular people being swindled by the
financial industry. But his undercover fealty to corporate interests is
positively run-of-the-mill compared to the contrast between his
reputation (caring, concerned with the less fortunate, a believer in the redemption of government) and the reality of his budget proposals.
Among the small class of journalists who crunch numbers, it has never been a secret
that Paul Ryan’s economic plans are either ridiculously impossible or
ridiculously savage, depending on how you interpret his goals. Still,
that fact has not prevented the birth of a cottage industry of hagiography portraying Ryan as the Republican Party’s great uniter—“a man of faith and family values whose only real baggage is the suitcase he carries home each weekend to Wisconsin.”
How does that comport with the reality of Paul Ryan’s stated
priorities? The year before Ryan ran for Vice President, the
Congressional Budget Office released its analysis
of his dream budget—the budget that established him as a serious
Washington figure, the budget that represents what Paul Ryan would have
our federal government do it was up to him. This is a man whose name is
still, five years later, being tossed around
as Republican presidential nominee this year, despite the fact he is
not running.
This is a very powerful and popular national political
figure. Did you know, friends, that Paul Ryan would like to defund—to in
essence abolish—vast swaths of the federal government? Including the
parts of the federal government that take care of poor people, and of
public schools, and of a lot of other things used by just about
everyone.
The CBO’s report explains
the formula Ryan uses to slash the part of the federal budget where all
the useful stuff is, apart from Medicare and Social Security:
The path for all other federal spending excluding
interest—that is, for discretionary spending and mandatory spending
apart from that for Social Security and the major mandatory health care
programs—was specified by Chairman Ryan’s staff. The remaining part of
mandatory spending includes such programs as federal civilian and
military retirement, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program,
unemployment compensation, Supplemental Security Income, the refundable
portion of the earned income and child tax credits, and most veterans’
programs. Discretionary spending includes both defense spending and
nondefense spending—in roughly equal amounts currently. That combination
of other mandatory and discretionary spending was specified to decline
from 12 percent of GDP in 2010 to about 6 percent in 2021 and then move
in line with the GDP price deflator beginning in 2022, which would
generate a further decline relative to GDP. No proposals were specified
that would generate that path.
What are the implications of such a spending reduction? The economist Dean Baker lays it out quite clearly. Bolding ours:
The analysis shows Ryan’s budget shrinking everything
other than Social Security and Medicare and other health care programs
to 3.5 percent of GDP by 2050. This is roughly the current size of the
military budget, which Ryan has indicated he wants to increase.
That leaves zero for everything else. Included
in everything else is the Justice Department, the National Park System,
the State Department, the Department of Education, the Food and Drug
Administration, Food Stamps, the National Institutes of Health, and just
about everything else that the government does.
Just to be
clear, CBO did this analysis under Ryan’s supervision. He never
indicated any displeasure with its assessment. In fact he boasted about
the fact that CBO showed his budget paying off the national debt.
Country music legend Merle HaggardDiesOn 79th Birthday
Country music legend Merle Haggard has died after battling double pneumonia according to his manager. Haggard was diagnosed with pneumonia last year and spent 11 days at
the Eisenhower Medical Center in Rancho Mirage early this year. He died
at home near Redding, CA on Wednesday morning.
He'd been battling back from the illness and even scheduled a string of concert dates with his pal Willie Nelson. They released an album, "Django and Jimmie" last year.
But last week Haggard canceled his shows for the month of April due
to his continuing efforts to recover. His manager said he was
weary from battling pneumonia for so long and had even predicted to
friends he would die on his birthday. His untimely death occurred today as he turned 79. He was inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame in 1994. RIP, Haggard!
Peter Okoye and his new manager fly to Dubai for a solo performance
Peter Okoye, one of the members of the former group 'P-Square', his new manager Olatunde Michaels (far right),
his choreographer DonFlexx and others, this afternoon traveled to Dubai for a performance he has there scheduled for 7th
and 8th April, 2016. See more photos below
The Inspector General of Police, Mr Solomon Arase, has said that all Policemen
will henceforth undergo snap urine tests to detect any signs of drug
abuse before they can be issued firearms. He made this known at the launch
of drug testing kits and campaign against sudden death of police
officers in Abuja today April 6th.
“After an in-depth study, my team and I have found out that some of
these fatal cases could be due to mishandling of firearms by police
officers who are psychologically unfit to handle firearms at that time.
We have therefore decided that the medical assessment of persons we
recruit into the police Force will include a psychological assessment“he
said.
Caroline Danjuma responds to IG user who berated her for saying all men cheat
This was after Caroline Danjuma addressed her marriage and said all men cheat, an
IG user disagreed with her by posting the comment above. Here is Caroline's
reply to the user. See other comments below
Checkout those named in the Panama Papers, you'll be shocked
What do heads of state, FIFA execs, billionaires,
celebrities, and hundreds of their rich and powerful friends have in
common? Quite a few things, but here’s something specific:
They’ve all been named in the “Panama Papers,” the trove of 11.5 million
records that give insight into how the rich and powerful hide their
money abroad.
On Sunday, a consortium of newspapers broke the news
about the documents and records, apparently leaked from the Panamanian
law firm Mossack Fonseca, which specializes in setting up offshore shell
companies for its clients.
How it all happened:
The German paper Süddeutsche Zeitung obtained the documents, which reportedly include e-mails, PDFs, photos, and “excerpts of an internal Mossack Fonseca database,” dating from the 1970s up to this spring.
The paper says the encrypted files came from an “anonymous source,” who apparently
“wanted neither financial compensation nor anything else in return,
apart from a few security measures” for what came out to 2.6 terabytes
of data: the biggest leak of this kind of all time.
In a feat of impressive collaboration, coordinated by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ), 100 news outlets publishing in 25 languages analyzed the records for a year before publication.
Contents of the documents:
The documents analyzed so far largely relate to off-shore bank
accounts established by Mossack Fonseca on behalf of its clients, which
are said to include politicians, celebrities, a ton of very wealthy
people, and quite a few criminals—both alleged and convicted.
There’s nothing illegal, per se, about opening a shell company or
using bearer bonds, and there are plenty of legitimate business reasons
to do so. But their use can also suggest the owner is trying to hide
funds or disguise the terms of a transaction like a divorce or real estate acquisition.
And indeed, that appears to be the case for a large number of Mossack Fonseca’s clients. Reports Süddeutsche Zeitung:
Clients can buy an anonymous company for as little as USD
1,000. However, at this price it is just an empty shell. For an extra
fee, Mossack Fonseca provides a sham director and, if desired, conceals
the company’s true shareholder. The result is an offshore company whose
true purpose and ownership structure is indecipherable from the outside.
Mossack Fonseca has founded, sold, and managed thousands of companies.
The documents provide a detailed view of how Mossack Fonseca routinely
accepts to engage in business activities that potentially violate
sanctions, in addition to aiding and abetting tax evasion and money
laundering.
According to
the ICIJ, some of the documents show that the banks, law firms and
middlemen involved “often failed to follow legal requirements that they
make sure their clients are not involved in criminal enterprises, tax
dodging or political corruption.” Other documents examined by the ICIJ
reportedly show offshore middlemen concealed suspect transactions.
According to Süddeutsche Zeitung, concealing the client’s
identity constituted the primary goal in “the vast majority” of cases.
Which makes sense—that’s why they go to Mossack Fonseca, which,
according to a 2015 audit, knew the true owners of just 204 of 14,086
companies it had incorporated in the Seychelles. According to the ICIJ,
the company once went so far as to remove paper records from its Nevada
offices to protect its clients from discovery.
The end result? A lot of money no one knows about.
The firm is denying everything: Mossack Fonseca co-founder Ramon Fonseca Mora tells CNN the
reports are false and claims several of the parties named in the leak
“are not and have never been clients of Mossack Fonseca.”
“Our services are
regulated on multiple levels, often by overlapping agencies, and we have
a strong compliance record,” the firm said.
“In
addition, we have always complied with international protocols” to
assure “that the companies we incorporate are not being used for tax
evasion, money laundering, terrorist finance or other illicit purposes,”
it added.
See those who have been implicated so far:
It’s not clear that the ton of bold-faced, high-profile names
reported as of today—at least 12 current or former heads of state, plus
hundreds of their wealthy friends, family, and countrymen—have done
anything illegal. But they also include at least 33 individuals and
companies blacklisted by the U.S. because of their business dealings
with entities like Hezbollah, North Korea, and Iran.
According to the
ICIJ, one of those companies has been accused of giving the Syrian
government fuel to use to bomb and kill its own citizens.
It’s going to take a while to parse out who owns what and whether
those transactions were legal or illegal, and more names are expected to
be made public in the weeks to come. According to
the ICIJ, the still-largely-anonymous client list contains a bevy of
prominent and powerful people that include “politicians, fraudsters and
drug traffickers as well as billionaires, celebrities and sports stars.”
Here are the big names we know so far:
Vladmir Putin
At least two of Putin’s closest friends are named in the documents,
which describe what appears to be a billion-dollar money laundering
ring.
Those two men are said to be concert cellist Sergei Roldugin, a
childhood friend of Putin’s and godfather to Putin’s daughter, and Yuri
V. Kovalchuk, the majority shareholder of Bank Rossiya, referred to by some as a “cashier” for Russian officials.
The Papers indicate Mossack Fonseca created a “complex, deliberately
convoluted network of offshore companies” for the men to funnel close to
two billion dollars through. Documents also show Roldugin’s involvement
with other companies—including the advertising firm founded by Mikhail
Lesin—who was found beaten to death in a Washington D.C. hotel.
Kovalchuk specifically denied the allegations to the New York Times, saying, “I’ve got an apartment, a car and a dacha... I don’t have millions.”
The Kremlin has so far, and will undoubtedly continue to, dismiss the papers as a smear campaign. Via CNN:
The Kremlin spokesman said it was clear the main target
of the reports was Mr Putin, as well as Russia’s political stability
ahead of parliamentary elections.
Dmitry Peskov dismissed the
investigation as insinuation and speculation, and suggested many of the
team of journalists behind it were actually former US state department
and CIA officials.
According to the ICIJ, documents also show Putin associates
“disguised payments, backdated documents and gained hidden influence
within the country’s media and automotive industries.”
Petro O. Poroshenko
Documents in the trove also indicate Petro O. Poroshenko, the
reformer president of Ukraine since 2014, lied about divesting his
assets before the election.
Mr. Poroshenko, a
tycoon with assets in television and a chocolatier before his entrance
into politics, pledged to divest himself of his holdings but instead
moved the assets into an offshore company in the British Virgin Islands,
according to the consortium’s reporting. It said that Mr. Poroshenko,
who has received political support from the United States, had not
disclosed the arrangement.
His financial advisors tell the
ICIJ he did not disclose the firm because it had no assets. Even so,
evidence indicates he was “scrambling” to find a copy of his utility
bill for the paperwork as Russia began its bloody invasion of the
country in 2014.
Icelandic Prime Minister, Sigmundur David Gunnlaugson
The documents indicate Iceland’s Prime Minister, Sigmundur David
Gunnlaugson, bought an offshore company called Wintris with his wife in
2007 which held millions of dollars in Icelandic bank bonds while the
country was in a financial crisis. Just a day before he would have had
to declare his 50% interest as a prerequisite of entering parliament, he
sold it to his wife—for the price of $1.
The company held bonds originally worth millions of
dollars in three giant Icelandic banks that failed during the 2008
global financial crash, making it a creditor in their bankruptcies.
Gunnlaugsson’s government negotiated a deal with creditors last year
without disclosing his family’s financial stake in the outcome.
He walked out of an interview yesterday when someone brought it up.
FIFA
Documents show Juan Pedro Damiani, a member of the FIFA ethics
committee, had business dealings with at least three men implicated in
the FIFA scandal last summer. FIFA’s ethics panel has since launched an
investigation.
Lionel Messi
The papers show the soccer player—who is currently under
investigation for tax evasion in Spain—owns at least one Panama company
called Mega Star Enterprises Inc.
Marianna Olszewski
Finally—an American.
One wealthy client, US millionaire and life coach Marianna Olszewski,
was offered fake ownership records to hide money from the authorities.
This is in direct breach of international regulations designed to stop
money-laundering and tax evasion.
An email from a Mossack
executive to Ms Olszewski in January 2009 explains how she could deceive
the bank: “We may use a natural person who will act as the beneficial
owner… and therefore his name will be disclosed to the bank. Since this
is a very sensitive matter, fees are quite high.”
Jackie Chan
Documents show Jackie Chan owns at least six companies established by the firm.
Hosni Mubarak
Documents show Mossack Fonseca was fined $37,500 for money laundering
after it set up a company for Mubarak’s son but “failed to identify the
connection” even after the former Egyptian president and his son were
both charged with corruption.
At the time, an internal review reportedly concluded, “our risk assessment formula is seriously flawed.”
Muammar Gaddafi
Details surrounding Gaddafi’s involvement are scant, but the BBC reports family members or associates held secret offshore accounts created by Mossack Fonseca.
President Bashar al-Assad
Rami Makhlouf, a cousin of al-Assad—described by the U.S. as a “poster boy for corruption”—was implicated in the papers, the Guardian reports, and while al-Assad is not specifically mentioned, the documents reveal “any foreign company seeking to do business in Syria had to be cleared by Rami.”
According to the Guardian’s analysis, Mossack Fonseca helped
the Makhlouf family register its Syrian companies in the British Virgin
Islands, and kept him as a client despite sanctions imposed against him
by the United States and his involvement in the Syrian civil war.
The documents show, however, that the Panamanian firm
continued to work with the Makhloufs, and in January 2011 it rejected
the advice of its own compliance team to cut ties with the family as the crisis in Syria began to unfold.
Documents
show a Mossack Fonseca compliance officer wrote: “I believe if an
individual is found on a sanction list then this is a serious red flag
and we should make every effort to disassociate ourselves from them.”
Though
Mossack Fonseca was not legally bound to comply with US sanctions, it
had an obligation to react to EU measures imposed in May 2011 and
extended to the British Virgin Islands (BVI) in June of that year. It
took until September 2011 before the partners finally agreed to resign
from Makhlouf’s companies.
Mauricio Macri
Argentina’s current president was reportedly a director and vice
president of an offshore company managed by Mossack Fonseca at the same
time he served as mayor of Buenos Aires. Documents appear to show he did
not disclose these assets. A spokesperson tells the ICIJ he never
personally owned shares of the firm.
Nawaz Sharif
Documents show the firm established companies that hid real estate holdings of Sharif’s children.
Ilham Aliyev
The firm established Panamanian foundations and shell companies for
the family of Azerbaijan’s president to hide their ownership in gold
mines and London real estate.
Xi Jinping
The family of Chinese president Xi Jinping—who rails against the
“armies of corruption”—obtained offshore companies through Mossack
Fonseca. The documents also indicate offshore holdings of the families
of at least seven other members of China’s Politburo Standing Committee.
David Cameron
According to the Guardian,
Cameron is now facing scrutiny over an offshore fund established by his
late father, Ian, which avoided ever paying taxes in the UK. Cameron
denies receiving any benefits from the offshore account.
“In terms of my own financial affairs, I own no shares. I have a
salary as prime minister and I have some savings, which I get some
interest from and I have a house, which we used to live in, which we now
let out while we are living in Downing Street and that’s all I have.”
