Hundreds of Swedes exposed in new leak about tax havens

The International Press Network ICIJ has reviewed nearly twelve million leaked documents detailing how heads of state and government, royals and celebrities use methods such as anonymous mailbox companies and institutions to hide assets from taxes in so-called tax havens, reports. SVT.

The documents contain information on more than 200 Swedes who can be linked to about a hundred different companies, most of which are registered in the tax havens of the British Virgin Islands, Seychelles and Belize.

Among the Swedes there are The CEO of a stock exchange representing a company in the British Virgin Islands, one of Sweden’s richest families, a Swedish businessman suspected of several accounting crimes, two men with strong ties to a far-right group, and a 50-year-old longtime member of the Hells Angels criminal organization.

“The leak shows that there is a world of shadows we don’t know. When countries are depleted of their assets, it widens the gaps. Tax havens deepen poverty,” says Gerard Ryle, president of the ICIJ Network of Journalists, the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists.

The network, which shook the world with the disclosure of the “Panama Papers” in 2016, states that the new revision is the largest to date. Among the nominated heads of state and government are the Prime Minister of the Czech Republic Andrej Babis, King Abdullah of Jordan, and the presidents of Ukraine, Kenya and Ecuador.

600 journalists from 117 countries participated in the review.

TT