In yesterday's Guardian, we learned that
David Cameron's family fortune
was built up by his father using investment trusts based in offshore
tax-havens in places like Panama, Geneva and the Channel Islands.
The article notes that Cameron's father Ian "took advantage of a new climate of investment after all
capital controls were abolished in 1979, making it legal to take any sum
of money out of the country without it being taxed or controlled by the
UK government." Cameron "went on to act as chairman of Close International Asset management, a
multimillion-pound investment fund based in Jersey; as a senior director
of Blairmore Holdings Inc, registered in Panama City and currently
worth £25m; and he was also a shareholder in Blairmore Asset Management
based in Geneva."
A 2006 prospectus for Blairmore Holdings
makes it clear that the fund was deliberately trying to attract
investors with the aim of avoiding UK tax : "The fund is not liable to
taxation on its income or capital gains as
long as such income or capital gains are not derived from sources
allocated within the territory of the Republic of Panama".
Can
it be really surprising that David Cameron is doing everything he
possibly can to prevent the introduction of any form of financial
transaction tax? Such a tax would obviously make the sort of devious
operations that his father used to make the family's fortune much harder
to work.
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