Skip to main contentSkip to navigationSkip to navigation
Jeremy Corbyn
Jeremy Corbyn said the Panama and Paradise Papers ‘shone a powerful light on the scandal of tax dodging’. Photograph: Aaron Chown/PA
Jeremy Corbyn said the Panama and Paradise Papers ‘shone a powerful light on the scandal of tax dodging’. Photograph: Aaron Chown/PA

Jeremy Corbyn leads criticism of Paradise Papers legal action

This article is more than 6 years old

Labour leader among senior politicians alarmed by Appleby action against BBC and Guardian over tax haven investigations

Jeremy Corbyn has expressed his support for the Guardian and the BBC in the face of legal action over their reporting on overseas tax havens, which he described as “an immoral scourge”.

The Labour leader said the investigative reporting involved in the Panama Papers and Paradise Papers was essential to promoting democratic debate.

Quick Guide

Key revelations from the Paradise Papers

Show

1) Millions of pounds from the Queen’s private estate has been invested in a Cayman Islands fund – and some of her money went to a retailer accused of exploiting poor families.

2) Prince Charles’s estate made a big profit on a stake in his friend’s offshore firm.

3) Extensive offshore dealings by Donald Trump’s cabinet members, advisers and donors, including substantial payments from a firm co-owned by Vladimir Putin’s son-in-law to the shipping group of the US commerce secretary, Wilbur Ross.

4) Twitter and Facebook received hundreds of millions of dollars in investments that can be traced back to Russian state financial institutions.

5) The tax-avoiding Cayman Islands trust managed by the Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau’s chief moneyman.

6) The Formula One champion Lewis Hamilton avoided taxes on a £17m jet using an Isle of Man scheme.

7) A previously unknown $450m offshore trust that has sheltered the wealth of Lord Ashcroft.

8) Oxford and Cambridge and top US universities invested offshore, with some of the money going into fossil fuel industries.

9) The man managing Angola’s sovereign wealth fund invested it in projects he stood to profit from.

10) Apple secretly moved parts of its empire to Jersey after a row over its tax affairs.

11) How the sportswear giant Nike stays one step ahead of the taxman.

12) The billions in tax refunds by the Isle of Man and Malta to the owners of private jets and luxury yachts.

13) Offshore cash helped fund Steve Bannon's attacks on Hillary Clinton.

14) The secret loan and alliance used by the London-listed multinational Glencore in its efforts to secure lucrative mining rights in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

15) The complex offshore webs used by two Russian billionaires to buy stakes in Arsenal and Everton football clubs.

16) Stars of the BBC hit sitcom Mrs Brown's Boys used a web of offshore companies to avoid tax.

17) British celebrities including Gary Lineker used an arrangement that let them avoid tax when selling homes in Barbados.

18) Prominent Brexit campaigners have put money offshore.

19) An ex-minister who defended tax avoidance has a Bahamas trust fund.

20) The Dukes of Westminster pumped millions into secretive offshore firms.

21) A tax haven lobby group boasted of 'superb penetration' at the top of the UK government before a G8 summit that was expected to bring in greater offshore transparency.

22) The law firm at the centre of the Paradise Papers leak was criticised for 'persistent failures' on terrorist financing and money laundering rules.

23) Seven Republican super-donors keep money in tax havens. 

24) A top Democratic donor built up a vast $8bn private wealth fund in Bermuda.

25) The schemes used to avoid tax on UK property deals.

26) The celebrities, from Harvey Weinstein to Shakira, with offshore interests.

27) How a private equity firm tried to extract £890m from a struggling care home operator by making it take out a costly loan.

28) Trump’s close ally Robert Kraft, the New England Patriots owner, is the longtime owner of an offshore firm.

29) One of the world’s biggest touts used an offshore firm to avoid tax on profits from reselling Adele and Ed Sheeran tickets.

Was this helpful?

Senior MPs from the Conservative and Liberal Democrat parties joined Labour in expressing support for investigative reporting and agreeing the disclosures were firmly in the public interest.

The Guardian is to mount a defence against Appleby’s action, which is seeking to force the disclosure of the documents that formed the basis for a series of articles.

Corbyn said: “The Panama Papers and the Paradise Papers shone a powerful light on the absolute scandal of tax dodging. Knowledge is power and investigative reporters and whistleblowers bring into the open information that strengthens democratic debate about the type of society we want to live in.“The more we know about the scale of, and techniques used for, tax dodging, the more we can develop policies to tackle this immoral scourge.”

Andrew Mitchell, a Conservative MP and former Cabinet minister, also expressed support. “The Paradise Papers show that secrecy is the enemy of transparency and good governance, and that powerful people do not go straight because they see the light but because they feel the heat,” he said.

“A free media provides that heat by shining a light on those who are not paying the tax they owe in the jurisdiction where they live. As such, the Guardian newspaper has provided a public service for which they should be applauded.”

The Liberal Democrat leader, Vince Cable, said: “It was patently in the public interest that this evidence of industrial-scale tax avoidance was revealed. The traditions of investigative journalism, be it by the Guardian, the BBC or other outlets, must be maintained in the face of intimidation.”

The shadow chancellor, John McDonnell, said the legal action was “rather alarming” and expressed hope that common sense and logic would prevail.

“The right of investigative journalists to pursue issues such as this, which are clearly in the public interest, should be sacrosanct,” he said. “I support the right of the Guardian and the BBC to report on the scandal of tax avoidance to shed light on these practices, which rob our public services of the resources they desperately need.”

Speaking before a House of Commons debate on a finance bill, during which the issue of overseas tax havens was expected to be raised, McDonnell said a Labour government would introduce changes to bring much of the currently secret information about tax havens into the public domain.

“As a result, it would force pressure on those who seek to squirrel away their money offshore to avoid taxation, and not those who expose such practices,” he said.

Labour’s deputy leader, Tom Watson, who has been prominent on media issues including phone hacking, said the Guardian and the BBC performed a valuable public service and the “cynical attempt to silence them” by citing legal confidentiality and data protection laws should be “laughed out of the courts”.

“This legal action shows Appleby and its clients have nothing but contempt for the vast majority of people who fund the public services we use by paying their taxes in full. We have a right to know about the loopholes, accounting tricks and offshore scams used by the wealthy few to avoid doing the same,” he said.

Margaret Hodge, the Labour MP and former chair of the public accounts select committee, who has been one of the leading campaigners for transparency in the offshore tax industry, said: “This is an incredibly worrying assault on the freedom of the press.

“[It is] an attempt to try to stop dedicated investigative journalists, working for newspapers and television, from exposing the truth about the way in which advisers, companies, rich individuals and secret jurisdictions hide their money and avoid paying a fair amount of tax.

“This cannot and must not stop the brilliant work that showed ordinary people what was happening in the murky tax-dodging world.”

Wilf Stevenson, a Labour whip in the Lords and former adviser to Gordon Brown, who as prime minister used a G20 meeting to press for tax haven changes, said he was glad the Guardian was going to defend the legal action by Appleby.

The case to protect investigative journalism was apt when the House of Lords was debating a bill to update the UK’s data protection laws, he said.

“We have been working closely with the government to ensure that the existing public interest defence for investigative journalism is retained in the new legislation,” Lord Stevenson said.

Echoing the political reaction, the National Union of Journalists pledged to defend the right to report such stories. Its general secretary, Michelle Stanistreet, described the legal action, taken against two of the 96 news organisations worldwide that reported the Paradise Papers, as “an outrageous and cynical manoeuvre”.

She said it was typical of companies to use their financial muscle to try to bully media outlets in the hope of frightening those who seek the truth.

Alex Cobham, the head of the Tax Justice Network, said: “After seeing the extent of tax abuse uncovered, triggering a series of investigations around the world, nobody could seriously question the public interest in publication of the Paradise Papers. Well, nobody except Appleby, it seems.”

Eleanor Nichol of the campaign group Global Witness said: “If we want a world where the most powerful people have to play by the same rules as the rest of us, it is vital investigative journalism is not silenced.”

Most viewed

Most viewed