Portuguese named in leaked Bahamas offshore directors list

At last some more details of tax haven company directors contained in files leaked to the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists have become available.

The Bahamas list of company directors is the latest leak from the Mossack Fonseca files with names of 28 Portuguese citizens and 22 foreigners resident in Portugal identified as directors of 38 Bahamian companies established between 1990 and 2016.

Micael Gulbenkian, the great-nephew of the Armenian founder of the Gulbenkian Foundation, Pedro Morais Leitão, a director of Oi, Joaquim Marques dos Santos, former president of Banif,  Carlos Duarte de Almeida from Banif, José Maria Franco O’Neill, Carlos Barbosa da Cruz, and former EU Commissioner Neelie Kroes, the list goes on.

In Neeie Kroes' case, she failed to declare her directorship of a Bahamian company while she was the most powerful corporate enforcer in Brussels. See: 'Ex-EU commissioner Neelie Kroes failed to declare directorship of offshore firm.'

Kroes was forbidden by the commissioners’ code of conduct to hold any outside directorships while working for he EU Commission in Brussels. The code states, “Commissioners may not engage in any other professional activity, whether gainful or not.”

The most recent company registered was September 2015 when Libertagia Mondial was set up. This later was used in one of the largest pyramid scheme frauds ever run from Spain or Portugal.

Libertagia Mondial was registered in the Bahamas in August 2014 and involved scammer Antonio Ferreira, Cristina Moreira, and Rui Salvador.

Most of these names may not mean much to the casual observer but each has been using companies based in the Bahamas to conduct their business out of the prying eyes of the Portuguese tax authorities.

All of those contacted by journalists today of course have supplied entirely plausible reasons for using such covert company structures but few will be believed by a Portuguese public already disgusted by the extent of tax evasion and corruption polluting the upper echelons of Portugal’s political and business communities.

The next step for the Tax Authority is to see if payments and dividends made by offshore firms to Portuguese residents have properly been declared on Portuguese tax returns - the answer in most cases is expected to be a 'no.'

Interestingly the list released is of businessmen, three of whom are known fraudsters, but there are no names of politicians, unilke in the UK where the new Home Secretary Amber Rudd has some awkward questions to answer.

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