Millions of files come from tax havens, for example the British Virgin Islands. Disclosures since 2013 have shown how the state helps cover up corruption and fraud.
Those “heaven” are regions or countries where relatively little taxes or taxes must be paid on certain things. Depending on the type of capital, there are many different tax havens that include our country in certain aspects, such as the British Isles in the Caribbean and Channel, Switzerland, Luxembourg, the United Arab Emirates and the United States.
Please note that many of the transactions in the leaked documents do not involve legal violations. But they do reveal the owners of the 95,000 offshore companies behind those transactions.
It’s about these people
The names of powerful people are fluttering quickly: about 35 current and former world leaders are mentioned in the files.
This is how he saved the former British Prime Minister Tony Blair And his wife over €364,000 when they bought an office worth €7.53 million through an offshore company. For many years he led the Labor Party, which defends workers.
Rich people like to invest their money in British real estate. This is how the Azerbaijani president appears Ilham Aliyev His family are involved in UK real estate transactions worth more than €467 million. and the King of Jordan He has amassed a hidden real estate empire in the United Kingdom and the United States worth approximately £82 million.
Leak also brought the Russian President Vladimir Putin Regarding undisclosed assets in Monaco. It also shows that the file Czech Prime Minister Andrej BabisFacing elections later this week, it owns an offshore investment firm that has bought two villas worth 14 million euros in southern France.
Wopke Hoekstra
Finance Minister Wopke Hoekstra doesn’t get away with this dance either. devotionAnd Financial Times and search platform research He had access to Pandora Papers and discovered that he had held a stake in the letterbox company in the Virgin Islands for many years.
Until October 2017, the CDA leader was part of a private investment club that is still using this Caribbean tax haven to invest in a safari company in East Africa.
The outgoing minister responded to the leak via Twitter. He explained in several tweets that he did not know at the time that the company’s headquarters was located in the British Virgin Islands.
FD and Trouw are paying attention to an investment I made twelve years ago in an ecotourism startup in Africa for a friend of mine. It comes to about 26,500 euros. 1/6
– Wopke Hoekstra (@WBHoekstra) October 3, 2021
Not a really strong defense, don’t you think? fedJournalist Johann Lubin: A mother who lives in luxury should not hide behind financial illiteracy. This will simply be handled by the tax authorities. So it is remarkable to say the least that he has such a defense. It raises questions.”
Tom de Swan
Chairman of the Supervisory Board Tom De Swan of state bank ABN Amro also invested privately through the private investment club of which Hoekstra was a part. Hoekstra appointed De Swaan to the bank in July 2018. ABN AMRO acknowledges that it is “distasteful to the zeitgeist” for De Swaan to invest privately through a tax haven. It’s not against the law, but according to ABN AMRO it’s an unfortunate situation, as it now links the bank to tax havens. De Swaan immediately rejects the investment and apologizes to colleagues via email.
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Defense investigative journalist Wopke Hoekstra: ‘This raises questions’
