It’s more than Monaco’s beaches and yachts that attract the wealthy. Photograph by David Hart
Sixty-eight MPs and peers are either directors or non-executive directors of firms linked to tax havens, exposing the reach of controversial offshore business practices in the highest echelons of British political life, according to a Guardian investigation.
MPs with tax haven links include the new business minister, Michael Fallon, former trade secretary Peter Lilley, and Labour’s Lord Carter of Coles. In total, 27 Tories, 17 Labor peers, three Lib Dem peers and 21 cross-bench or non-affiliated peers have links to offshore havens.
Guardian journalists Rajeev Syal and Martin Williams examined the individual registers of interests of MPs before cross-referencing them with other accounts and financial records.
Most of the MPs claimed that the offshore firms were not being used for tax or corporate purposes and that as individuals they made large tax contributions in the UK.
But such a defence, albeit technically accurate, is unlikely to deflect criticism given that recent studies show that £13 trillion in wealth is hidden offshore by the global elite and that legal tax avoidance represents nearly 14% of the UK tax gap.
Related story: Undeclared interests: Peers fail to register business roles
One high-profile UK politician and Conservative Party treasurer, Lord Fink, has gone even further in the defence of offshore havens by telling the Guardian in a ‘frank interview’ that he has lobbied the government to make the UK a tax haven.
Lord Fink is a director of three firms with subsidiaries or a parent company in tax havens including the Cayman Islands, Luxembourg and Guernsey, the Guardian revealed.
Related story: Conservative Treasurer accused of breaking House of Lords rules
The Guardian investigation appears in the same week that The Times reports on the 2,000 Britons living in the tax haven of Monaco. Businessmen, entertainers and race care drivers are among the well-heeled high-flyers who have funnelled £1 bn out of the UK, The Times reports.
TopShop’s Sir Philip Green avoided paying £285 million in capital gains tax – enough to cover the estimated government cuts in legal aid – on profits of £1.3 bn last year largely because his company is majority owned by his Monaco-based wife, Tina. Other Britons enjoying the beach and benefits of the small European principality include Dame Shirley Bassey, easyJet founder Sir Stelios Haji-Ioannou and Sir Roger Moore, the Times reports.
At least 11 Monaco-based Britons have received honours, including Sir Philip Green and Jim McColl. Still others have reduced their tax liabilities in the UK while donating millions of pounds to political parties, notwithstanding a 2009 law that limited the size of political donations from tax exiles. Today, a member of the influential Treasury Select Committee, John Mann, is calling on Labour and the Conservatives to return £1.3 m in donations received from non-residents and non-domiciles.
Read The Guardian investigation here.
Read The Times investigation here (£).
Written by Will Fitzgibbon
