British Prime Minister David Cameron is under increasing pressure over suggestions that he stands to benefit from an offshore investment fund his late father ran.
According to the Guardian, a leak of documents from Panama-based law firm Mossack Fonseca reveals that Ian Cameron — the Conservative leader’s father, who died in 2010 — was a director of a company registered in the Bahamas named Blairmore Holdings Inc. (Blairmore is the name of the Victorian country estate in Scotland from where Cameron’s aristocratic family hails.) The Guardian alleges that the fund — founded in the 1980s — has never paid any tax in the U.K., where the senior Cameron and four other directors were based.
The Prime Minister himself does not hold shares in the fund, but he faces calls from the opposition Labour Party for an investigation into whether he or his family might stand to benefit from it.
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When confronted with questions about the fund during a televised appearance Tuesday, Cameron, who has taken a tough stance against financial secrecy since taking office in 2010, said: “I have no shares, no offshore trusts, no offshore funds, nothing like that.”
Cameron’s office issued a further clarification that “the prime minister, his wife and their children do not benefit from any offshore funds,” the Guardian reports. But questions remain over whether Cameron or his family will benefit in the future. According to the Guardian, Blairmore Holdings is now based in Ireland and manages more than $31 million.
The massive leak of 11.5 million documents known as the Panama Papers has already led to the resignation of Iceland’s Prime Minister, who was revealed to have co-owned a company offshore that he did not disclose when entering parliament. About half the companies named in the leaks are based in the British Virgin Islands.
[Guardian]
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