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Thursday, July 3, 2025

Tax haven data leak raises questions

by

20130407

PARIS–It's a da­ta leak in­volv­ing tens of thou­sands of off­shore bank ac­counts, nam­ing dozens of promi­nent fig­ures around the world. And new de­tails are be­ing re­leased by the day–rais­ing the prospect that ac­counts based on promis­es of se­cre­cy and tax shel­ter could some­day of­fer nei­ther.

Among those named in­clude a top cam­paign of­fi­cial in France, the ex-wife of par­doned oil trad­er Marc Rich, Azer­bai­jan's rul­ing fam­i­ly, the daugh­ter of Imel­da Mar­cos and the late Baron Elie de Roth­schild. The wide­spread use of off­shore ac­counts among the wealthy is wide­ly known – even Mitt Rom­ney ac­knowl­edged stash­ing some of his mil­lions in in­vest­ments in the Cay­man Is­lands.

But last week's leak, or­ches­trat­ed by a Wash­ing­ton-based group called the In­ter­na­tion­al Con­sor­tium of In­ves­tiga­tive Jour­nal­ists, ap­peared to be the broad­est in what has been a steady stream of in­for­ma­tion emerg­ing about hid­den mon­ey in re­cent years amid a wave of anger tar­get­ing the su­per-rich in an age of aus­ter­i­ty.

The leak al­leged­ly in­volved records from ten tax havens, where the world's wealthy have long stashed funds. It un­cov­ered a shad­ow net­work of emp­ty hold­ing com­pa­nies and names es­sen­tial­ly rent­ed out to fill out boards of non-ex­is­tent cor­po­ra­tions, in­clud­ing a British cou­ple list­ed as ac­tive in more than 2,000 en­ti­ties, ac­cord­ing to The Guardian news­pa­per, which par­tic­i­pat­ed in the glob­al un­der­tak­ing.

The project start­ed with the re­ceipt of a hard dri­ve by an Aus­tralian jour­nal­ist, Ger­ard Ryle, who took the da­ta with him when he joined the con­sor­tium, ac­cord­ing to the project's Web site. The group, a project of the Wash­ing­ton-based Cen­ter for Pub­lic In­tegri­ty, has said the hard dri­ve ar­rived in the mail.

"We know the da­ta is valid. We know who orig­i­nal­ly pro­duced the da­ta and we've done mas­sive cross­checks to make sure what we're get­ting is ac­cu­rate and isn't cor­rupt­ed," said Michael Hud­son, a se­nior ed­i­tor on the project.Rudolf Elmer, who once ran the Caribbean op­er­a­tions of the Swiss bank Julius Baer and turned whistle­blow­er af­ter he was dis­missed in 2002, told The As­so­ci­at­ed Press that he con­sid­ers the da­ta to be au­then­tic.

"This com­pre­hen­sive in­for­ma­tion is like a torch that will prob­a­bly set off a wild­fire and bring to light a lot more about se­cre­tive tax havens," he said.The se­cret bank ac­counts of the rich and pow­er­ful have re­cent­ly come un­der a crush of whis­tle-blow­ing scruti­ny.

France's for­mer bud­get min­is­ter, Jerome Cahuzac, was forced to re­sign last month af­ter a French in­ves­tiga­tive Web site un­re­lat­ed to the lat­est leak re­vealed that he held off­shore ac­counts–a par­tic­u­lar­ly dam­ag­ing scan­dal be­cause he was spear­head­ing a cam­paign against tax eva­sion. In 2010, a Greek jour­nal­ist pub­lished a list of about 2,000 peo­ple hold­ing un­de­clared Swiss bank ac­counts, dis­clo­sures that trig­gered a firestorm of out­rage as Greeks were forced to swal­low bru­tal aus­ter­i­ty mea­sures.

In No­vem­ber, an HS­BC in­sid­er leaked a list of more than 8,000 cus­tomers with ac­counts based in Britain's tiny Jer­sey Is­land, draw­ing an im­me­di­ate tax in­ves­ti­ga­tion from Britain's rev­enue and cus­toms ser­vice. Two years be­fore that, a for­mer HS­BC em­ploy­ee stole ac­count de­tails for 24,000 clients. Ger­many, ea­ger to learn about its own tax cheats, prompt­ly of­fered to buy the in­for­ma­tion.

There is noth­ing in­her­ent­ly il­le­gal about open­ing bank ac­counts over­seas, but it's well known that the wealthy use them to avoid high­er tax­es at home–a prac­tice that Saint-Amans said was quick­ly falling afoul of gov­ern­ments des­per­ate for rev­enue, es­pe­cial­ly those suf­fer­ing in the Eu­ro­pean fi­nan­cial cri­sis.

Britain has an out­sized share of off­shore ter­ri­to­ries, which in­clude the British Vir­gin Is­lands, Bermu­da, the Cay­man Is­lands and the Chan­nel Is­lands, whose 4� square miles (12 square kilo­me­tres) are sat­u­rat­ed with cur­rent and for­mer British com­pa­ny di­rec­tors, ac­cord­ing to The Guardian."Britain has this net­work of satel­lite tax havens around the world that have been act­ing as feed­ers," said Nicholas Shax­on, au­thor of the book Trea­sure Is­lands.

"I hope this has cre­at­ed a new will­ing­ness among play­ers who are in­side the sys­tem to say, 'Hang on, maybe this isn't such a good thing,'" Shax­on said.


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