The papers have caused public outrage over how world’s rich and powerful are able to stash their cash and avoid taxes while many people suffer austerity and hardship.
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David Cameron has ducked a question about whether his family stands to benefit from offshore assets linked to his late father, after his tax affairs came under scrutiny following the Panama Papers data leak. Prosecutors and regulators began reviewing the revelations, following a leak to German newspaper, Suddeutsche Zeitung, resulting in a year-long collaborative investigation by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) and other media organisations.
Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn has slammed the Government for its failure to tackle tax avoidance in the aftermath of a huge leak of documents detailing offshore schemes used by wealthy investors.
Asked if anyone from the Cameron family still had money in any companies like this, she said the matter is “private”.
Bambang said the government had information on Indonesians who had stashed money in countries that were tax havens.
Iceland Prime Minister Sigmundur David Gunnlaugsson resigned Tuesday amid pressure from opposition parties and wide-scale protests in the capital Reykjavik.
“They are not independent territories, they are self-governing yes, but they are British crown dependent territories, therefore surely there has to be an observance of United Kingdom tax law in those places”, he said.
“I have a salary as prime minister, and I have some savings, which I get some interest from, and I have a house”, he said.
Dominic Grieve, a former attorney general and Conservative chair of the Intelligence and Security Committee, said preventing overseas territories from running their own financial services would push criminality elsewhere.
In an interview with the Financial Times, Mossack Fonseca founder Ramon Fonseca said the disclosure was undermining legitimacy of offshore companies.
USA sanctions against Rami Makhlouf, for example, do not compel a Panama-based firm to act, even if leaked internal documents from a Mossack Fonseca compliance officer noted that it was “a serious red flag”.
“We have recovered billions of pounds in our country by changing tax regulations and rules budget after budget – billions of pounds but we’ve also led the world in making sure we have, and we’ll have in June, an open register of beneficial ownership so everyone can see who owns what in Britain”.
Mr Corbyn demanded tougher action saying: “This unfairness and abuse must stop”.
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Until 2006, for example, Blairmore was run using a financial instrument known as bearer shares, which resembles banknotes in that they don’t carry an owner’s name and belong to whoever holds a share’s certificate.
