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Panama Papers: Mossack Fonseca usurped name of Red Cross to hide money - reports

Associated Press Sunday, 10 April 2016, 15:59 Last update: about 10 years ago

6:40 p.m.

Britain's opposition Labour Party says the government should be ashamed of the fact that more than half of the offshore companies identified in the Panama data leak are based in British island tax havens such as the Bahamas, Bermuda, Caymans and British Virgin Islands.

Labour's finance spokesman, John McDonnell, says his party wants Britain's ethics laws to be tightened so that all politicians will be required to publish details of their offshore investments. He spoke Sunday as he unveiled what Labour called a "tax transparency enforcement program" that proposes giving the treasury greater powers to pinpoint tax evasion in Britain's far-flung island territories.

McDonnell said: "Tax haven corruption is not just a tax issue. It drives at the very heart of our democracy and its credibility. We risk eroding public trust in our democracy if we do not tackle the issue head on."

He spoke hours after Prime Minister David Cameron published details of his income and tax payments from 2009 to 2015, a move designed to defuse criticism over his admission that he had profited from a Bahamas investment trust organized by his late father. Cameron's records showed he paid tax on the 2010 profit.

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5:55 p.m.

Germany's finance minister has proposed an international initiative to standardize and share information that he says will help fight tax evasion and money laundering.

Germany's Die Welt newspaper reported Sunday that Wolfgang Schaeuble plans to set up a national register in Germany to better identify who owns and controls companies, trusts and other legal structures, as required under new European Union guidelines passed last year.

His plan calls for all countries to standardize and link their national registers, and for access to be given to tax authorities as well as NGOs and journalists.

The Finance Ministry told Die Welt that in the wake of the Panama offshore accounts revelations Germany isn't currently planning to ban anonymous letter-box accounts and instead believes "full transparency is the correct path" to take.

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4:15 p.m.

Spanish online news site El Confidencial has published documents it says show that a former chairman of one of Spain's largest banks used Panamanian law firm Mossack Fonseca to create an offshore company.

El Confidencial says it has obtained documents that outline how former Caja Madrid Chairman Miguel Blesa in 1989 used Mossack Fonseca to create Danforth Investments in the British Virgin Islands.

The news site says the documents show the purpose of Danforth was to invest in Spain-based companies such as aircraft manufacturer Construcciones Aeronavales SA and arms firm EINSA.

Caja Madrid was merged with seven other Spanish savings banks in 2011 to form Bankia SA, which later had to be nationalized and bailed out by the state for 18 billion euros ($24 billion).

Blesa was chairman of Caja Madrid from 1996 to 2009 and has been under investigation for alleged irregularities in the bank since 2013.

El Confidencial says Blesa's lawyers have declined to comment on its report.

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4 p.m.

Newspapers working on the mammoth leak of offshore data say the Panamanian firm at the center of the scandal used the name and reputation of the International Committee of the Red Cross to help obscure the origin of millions of dollars in questionable money.

There's no suggestion that the humanitarian group knew its name was used in this way. Red Cross spokeswoman Claire Kaplun said Sunday that the revelation was "extremely shocking."

France's Le Monde and Switzerland's Le Matin Dimanche say Mossack Fonseca created dummy foundations to hold shares in some 500 offshore companies. The foundations claimed beneficiaries such as the Red Cross, a maneuver that kept the companies' true owners anonymous, while cloaking them in an "NGO aura."

Mossack Fonseca didn't immediately return an email seeking comment.

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