ABN AMRO’s Supervisory Board Chairman, Tom de Swaan, is relinquishing his investment through letterbox, following publications related to it. He does so because investing via a tax haven raises questions in the current zeitgeist, he says in an internal publicly available letter. His name appears in pandora leaves, which also mentions outgoing Finance Minister Hoekstra (CDA).
Like Hoekstra, De Swaan invested through letterbox in the British Virgin Islands to invest in a friend’s safari business in East Africa. “I hadn’t built the structure twelve years ago and it hasn’t helped me and other investors,” De Swan wrote.
The British Virgin Islands are known as a tax haven. According to De Swan, his investment across those islands is not intended to evade tax “or worse.”
De Swaan apologizes and immediately cashes his investment and donates the proceeds to the founders of Safari: “until it becomes clear to us what that investment is.”
from pandora leaves It originated from the group of international journalists ICIJ, who own 12 million documents leaked from credit bureaus.
A spokesman for the Ministry of Finance said that the ministry is aware of the decision of the head of the authority and did not have any substantive role in this decision. The Ministry wants to leave feedback here and will not answer further questions from the NOS.
