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David Cameron and family 'will not gain from offshore funds in future' David Cameron and family 'will not gain from offshore funds in future'
(35 minutes later)
David Cameron and his family will not benefit in the future from any offshore funds, his spokesman has belatedly revealed, following repeated failures to provide a full account of the prime minister’s links to a controversial overseas company set up by his late father.David Cameron and his family will not benefit in the future from any offshore funds, his spokesman has belatedly revealed, following repeated failures to provide a full account of the prime minister’s links to a controversial overseas company set up by his late father.
Cameron has come under increasing pressure to give a clear explanation of how and whether he, his wife and children stood to benefit from Blairmore, the Bahamas-based company set up by his father Ian, which avoided ever paying tax in Britain. Cameron has come under increasing pressure to give a clear explanation of how and whether he, his wife and children stood to benefit from Blairmore, the company set up by his late father Ian in Panama and the Bahamas, which avoided ever paying tax in Britain.
The prime minister and his office gave three partial answers about the fund on Tuesday but crucially failed to say whether Cameron and his family would gain in the future from Blairmore, an investment fund.The prime minister and his office gave three partial answers about the fund on Tuesday but crucially failed to say whether Cameron and his family would gain in the future from Blairmore, an investment fund.
But on Wednesday his spokesman provided further clarity. “There are no offshore funds/trusts which the prime minister, Mrs Cameron or their children will benefit from in future,” he said. On Wednesday his spokesman provided further clarity. “There are no offshore funds/trusts which the prime minister, Mrs Cameron or their children will benefit from in future,” he said.
A statement on Tuesday only said the Camerons are not currently benefiting from the offshore fund. A statement on Tuesday had only said the Cameron, his wife and children are not currently benefiting from any offshore funds.
More details soon . . . Downing Street sources had reacted defiantly to questions about whether Cameron and his family could benefit from Blairmore in future through any inheritance, saying it was time for his critics to “put up or shut up”.
But Wednesday’s statement is the fourth statement from No 10 on the issue of the prime minister’s links to offshore funds, showing he is under intense pressure despite Downing Street’s efforts to close the story down.
The Panama Papers, 11.5m documents leaked from the offshore agent Mossack Fonseca, reveal the details of how Cameron Sr sheltered Blairmore’s profits with a series of expensive and complicated arrangements.
After details of the leak were published by the Guardian, the prime minister’s spokesman initially told journalists that Cameron’s finances were a “private matter”.
But as the heat turned up on Cameron to further explain himself, including a direct challenge from Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, the prime minister addressed the issue on Tuesday at a Q&A in Birmingham.
“In terms of my own financial affairs, I own no shares,” he said. “I have a salary as prime minister and I have some savings, which I get some interest from and I have a house, which we used to live in, which we now let out while we are living in Downing Street and that’s all I have. I have no shares, no offshore trusts, no offshore funds, nothing like that. And, so that, I think, is a very clear description.”
Following complaints that this did not answer the question, a No 10 spokesman released the following statement: “To be clear, the prime minister, his wife and their children do not benefit from any offshore funds. The prime minister owns no shares. As has been previously reported, Mrs Cameron owns a small number of shares connected to her father’s land, which she declares on her tax return.”
The row embroiling Cameron picked up pace on Tuesday morning when Corbyn responded to Downing Street’s assertion that the matter was private by telling reporters: “Well, it’s a private matter insofar as it’s a privately-held interest. But it’s not a private matter if tax is not being paid. So an investigation must take place, an independent investigation, unprejudiced, to decide whether or not tax has been paid.”
As well as pressing Cameron, Corbyn called for a cleanup of Britain’s overseas territories and dependencies, including the British Virgin Islands, which accounts for about half the companies named in the Panama Papers, the Cayman Islands and Anguilla.
The Labour leader said the government should consider imposing direct rule on British overseas territories and crown dependencies, which lie at the heart of the allegations.
The government had already scheduled a meeting of G7 countries in London on 12 May to discuss the overseas territories and crown dependencies. Tax campaigners, however, said that government officials had been downplaying expectations for months, telling them that tax would not be high on the agenda and that instead the main item would be corruption, such as the low-level bribery of officials.
The Panama Papers were leaked to the German daily Süddeutsche Zeitung, which shared them with the Washington-based International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, the Guardian, the BBC and other media organisations.