Paradise Papers: Journalists Find Queen Elizabeth II Offshore Investments

Фото: Depositphotos

October 5 at the same time 400 journalists in 67 countries published their material on the financial secrets of politicians and officials.

New global investigative journalism called Paradise Papers or “Documents from the paradise islands”, as the journalists analyzed data on the owners of offshore companies located mainly on small exotic islands.

Among the defendants of these papers was the Queen of Great Britain Elizabeth II and Petro Poroshenko, reports portal Hromadske.ua.

The Queen Elizabeth II Foundation is on the list of clients of a law firm Applebywhich is engaged in registration of offshore companies, as well as provides services in tax planning and corporate management.

The investigation says that the Duchy of Lancaster, which manages the assets of Queen Elizabeth II’s personal income, invested in a fund in the Cayman Islands. This fund, in turn, invested in a company that controls a scandalous financial institution. Brighthouse UK.

Brighthouse provided microloans to customers almost under 100% per annum. In October, 2017 supervisors recognized the terms of many loans as unfair and obliged Brighthouse pay almost 15 million pounds in compensation to 250 to thousands of customers.

The representative of Queen Elizabeth II in response to the request of the newspaper The Guardian He recognized the investment in the Cayman Fund, but stressed that the Duchy of Lancaster was not aware of further investments in Brighthouse.

Company Appleby, the archive of which fell into the hands of journalists, was founded in 1898, in Bermuda, in the colony of Great Britain.

Appleby It was considered one of the “cleanest” offshore registrars in the world: the company had a strict client verification procedure. For example, many people from Russia Appleby refused to register offshore companies in connection with their family ties with officials or managers of state-owned companies or in connection with the mention of their names in the media in the context of corruption scandals. One of those whom the company refused to provide services became the president of Ukraine Petro Poroshenko.

Appleby serves not only politicians and officials, but also transnational corporations (Nike, Apple, Facebook) and royals, including the foundation of the Queen of Great Britain Elizabeth II. Services Appleby The Queen of Jordan, Nur Al-Hussein, also used: she is indicated by the beneficiary of two trusts in Jersey.

“Paradise Island Documents” contains 13,4 of a million documents telling about connections between Russia and the billion-dollar trade minister from the office of US President Donald Trump, about the secret activities of Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s donation collector, and about the British Queen’s offshore interests and more than 120 politicians from all over the world, writes Center for the Investigation of Corruption and Organized Crime (OCCRP)who was one of the participants in the journalistic investigation.

From the leaked documents it is clear how closely the offshore financial system is connected with the multi-layered world of political games, private capital and giant companies, including Apple, Nike, Uber and other international corporations that evade taxes through increasingly sophisticated methods.

Documents obtained from business registries in 19 jurisdictions contain company names and information about them, as well as the names of directors and ultimate owners of firms registered in many of the most active offshore zones in the world.

The materials relate to the more or less prestigious strongholds of world shadow finance, including the Marshall Islands, Lebanon and Saint Kitts and Nevis. In some jurisdictions, these data are publicly available, but they cannot be searched by name. Other departments, such as the Cayman Islands, require more than 30 dollars for a one-page document containing only the most basic information. Another six registries data is not posted on the network.

The leaked files contain over a thousand documents from the Caribbean state of Antigua and Barbuda, which does not provide information online, and more than 600 thousands of documents from the Barbados online registry, which does not provide information about directors and shareholders.

Over the past decade or even longer, the European Union and other international organizations have been putting pressure on "offshore harbors" in an attempt to force them to carry out legislative reforms and have demanded that intermediary companies carefully check their clients. According to experts, progress is still insignificant for two reasons: it is not easy to change the working methods in such an extensive international structure, and besides it serves the interests of influential people and large companies.

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