The bank said in a statement on Monday that it has “a proactive policy with regard to the fight against fraud and tax avoidance”.
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“I have no shares, no offshore trusts, no offshore funds, nothing like that”.
Paul Radu, who heads the RISE Project, a group of investigative journalists publishing details about Romanians who have offshore companies, says there are 100 Romanians in the so-called Panama Papers.
For its part, Mossack Fonseca says it has operated beyond reproach for the past 40 years and has never been charged with any criminal wrongdoing.
The leak which included four decades of documents surfaced from anonymous sources, highlighted a Panamanian law firm which focuses in setting up offshore companies.
Other leading figures and financial institutions responded to the leak with denials of any wrongdoing as prosecutors and regulators began a review of the investigation by the US-based International Consortium of Investigative Journalists and other media organisations.
At a news briefing Tuesday, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Hong Lei declined to comment in response to repeated questions about the reports, which he described as “pulled out of nowhere”. More information is expected over the coming weeks.
Deduplication – the process of removing redundant data such as copies of the same email chain – slimmed the final cache by 30 percent.
Coutts said it is committed to the highest standards of regulatory compliance, including tax laws, anti-money laundering regulations and global sanctions.
“As the leaked documents show, tax havens have become honey pots of worldwide corruption, tax avoidance and evasion”. He has said he has done nothing wrong.
Mr Cameron set out his line in 2011 when he said: “We need to shine a spotlight on who owns what and where the money is really flowing”.
Panama President Juan Carlos Varela has said that his government has “zero tolerance” for illicit financial activities and would co-operate vigorously with any judicial investigation in any country.
The government’s response came as no surprise, but many Chinese are likely to have heard about the ICIJ reports by finding ways around the censors or by discussing them indirectly, said Zhang Lifan, a Beijing-based independent historian and political observer. It said the main targets were opponents of the West, especially Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn has said he will publish his own tax returns – and has called on Mr Cameron to “set the record straight” by publishing his. Asked if anyone from the Cameron family still had money in any companies like this, she said the matter is “private”. In a meeting that year with Mossack Fonseca, the bank’s representatives asserted the law firm should be responsible for identifying the shells’ owners, while the law firm insisted it didn’t know who some of them were because the bank had withheld the information, according to the report.
The ICIJ claims that the leak shows 140 politicians and public officials have been operating offshore accounts, with more than 214,000 organisations.
AUTHORITIES across the world are being spurred into action after a huge leak of confidential documents revealed how tax havens are used to hide wealth.
Iceland’s Prime Minister Sigmundur David Gunnlaugsson and Barcelona striker Lionel Messi have also been named.
A wide array of opposition groups are planning protests Tuesday evening seeking new elections.
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Leaked documents traced the sale of an offshore company to the premier and his wife in 2007, with undeclared interest. He denies doing anything illegal and says all taxes were paid.
