More high-profile names, details emerge from leak
Berlin — The fallout from a massive leak of records on offshore accounts dragged a growing number of leaders and celebrities into the spotlight Wednesday, with a Bollywood actor, a race car driver and Ukraine’s president among those denying that they evaded taxes.
The reports center on millions of documents detailing how the rich and powerful use shell companies in low-tax states like Panama or the Cayman Islands, sometimes giving them fanciful names based on James Bond films, such as “Goldfinger,” “Skyfall,” “GoldenEye” and “Moonraker.”
The Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project, one of the media companies with access to the leaks, said the law firm also incorporated companies named Blofeld and Spectre, after the classic Bond villain and his organization.
The suspicion that such accounts are used to skirt taxes prompted a rush of denials.
Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko was the latest high-profile politician to face scrutiny, denying he had meant to evade taxes by putting his candy company offshore.
Poroshenko had promised voters that he would sell his business when he ran for office in 2014. But according to the reports, he merely moved it secretively offshore.
Poroshenko said Wednesday that he had done nothing illegal when he created the offshore holding company to put his business in a blind trust when he became president. “This is absolutely normal procedure,” he said during a visit to Tokyo. “If we have anything to be investigated, I am happy to do that. But this is absolutely transparent from the very beginning. No hidden account, no associated management, no nothing.”
The data leaked from the Panamabased law firm Mossack Fonseca was reported on this week by an international group of media companies with the coordination of the Washington-based International Consortium of Investigative Journalists. The leak, known as the Panama Papers case, has revived a global debate over the use of offshore accounts and companies.
When used legally, offshore accounts can reduce a person or company’s tax bill. But because they can obscure the identity of the owner, such accounts are often used illegally to hide money from the taxman or launder ill-gotten gains.
Also dragged into the spotlight were:
Formula One driver Nico Rosberg, whose lawyer said an offshore firm linked to him was created solely for liability reasons and to enable him to operate internationally, not tax avoidance. Rosberg won Sunday’s Bahrain Grand Prix.
Prominent Bollywood actor Amitabh Bachchan, who denied reports by The Indian Express newspaper that he was connected to four shipping companies registered in tax havens. “It is possible that my name has been misused,” Bachhan tweeted late Tuesday, adding that he has paid all the taxes that he owed.