Wopke Hoekstra invested in letterbox in the Virgin Islands: ‘We should have digged deeper’ | Economie

Hoekstra’s participation is evident from his research devotionAnd Financial Times The Investico search platform. They had access to Pandora’s Papers, about 12 million leaked documents from tax havens.

Documents show that Hoekstra invested in an ecotourism company owned by an old acquaintance that offers safaris in Africa. Hoekstra wrote on Twitter that it was about €26,500. “This investment has never been for the sake of profit for me. No dividend has ever been paid.

Until October 2017, the outgoing CDA leader and finance minister was part of a private investment club that still uses this Caribbean tax haven to invest in a safari company in East Africa. The closed club also included Supervisory Board Chairman Tom De Swan of state bank ABN Amro, who was appointed to the bank by Hoekstra in the summer of 2018.

The British Virgin Islands is one of the largest tax havens in the world. Leaked documents show the state has been helping cover up corruption and fraud since 2013.

Hoekstra bought his shares in the Virgin Islands in 2009 and sold them a week before he became finance minister in October 2017. From that moment on, it was his job as minister to deal with abuses through tax havens.

Hoekstra wrote on Twitter that he donated profits of around €4,800 to a good cause: scientific research into cancer. “I did not realize 12 years ago where the company was,” the minister said. “Of course I should have looked into that more then.”

vs devotion Hoekstra reports that he has always reported his interest in letterbox to the tax authorities. But he did not do so in the Senate, where he was a Christian Democrat senator between 2011 and 2017. Hoekstra was then a member of a committee that contributed ideas on the international fight against tax evasion.

The head of the Community Development Authority also stated that he was not obligated to disclose his shares, and that he always complied with the required procedures.

Various parties in the House of Representatives are not satisfied with the explanation. PvdA and GroenLinks want a quick discussion with Hoekstra. GroenLinks party leader Jesse Claver wrote on twtter: “It is very disturbing news that our finance minister’s name appears in these leaked documents about mailbox companies.” “The bottom stone must come.”

The Pandora Papers, one of the biggest financial document leaks ever, reveals the hidden wealth and secret dealings of world leaders, politicians and billionaires. About 35 current and former world leaders, including Tony Blair, Vladimir Putin and King Abdullah of Jordan, are on file.

The Pandora Papers fit into a series of leaks that have been published over the past seven years, following the FinCen Files, Paradise Papers, Panama Papers, and LuxLeaks. The files were investigated by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ), and more than 650 investigative journalists participated in it.

Several international media, including the BBC and Washington Post, have had access to 12 million documents from 14 financial services companies in the British Virgin Islands, Panama, Belize, Cyprus, the United Arab Emirates, Singapore, Switzerland and others.

The Panama Papers, in which the management of a Panamanian legal service provider was thrown into the street, caused a global stir in 2016. The documents contained the names of several companies, including in the Netherlands, that appeared to facilitate tax evasion through email companies. The names of several prominent personalities who put their money in suspicious ways also appeared.

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