Member

However, a series of major leaks—the Panama papers, the Paradise papers and the Pandora papers—have revealed the shameful role played by parts of the UK’s offshore network in enabling the evasion of taxes and the laundering of ill-gotten gains. The British Virgin Islands alone accounts for more than half of the shell companies exposed in the Panama papers, and companies registered there have appeared in about 90% of the major corruption cases identified by Transparency International over the past two decades, with an estimated £250 billion diverted through rigged procurement, bribery, embezzlement and the unlawful seizure of state assets. High-profile examples of tax dodging illustrate that the system is simply not working as it should, and I would welcome any measures that the Government take to address this issue.