Ken Livingstone has said the owners of the Daily Mail, Telegraph, Sun and Times will “do anything” to stop Jeremy Corbyn becoming prime minister because they fear he would make it more difficult for them to avoid tax.

The former London mayor described Mail proprietor Lord Rothermere, Telegraph owners the Barclay Brothers and Rupert Murdoch, who controls Times and Sun publisher News UK, as “tax dodgers” in a pre-recorded interview to be broadcast on RT’s Going Underground on Saturday.

Asked whether he was worried about threats to Corbyn from internal opposition within the party, Livingstone said: “The smearing of Jeremy is exactly what happened to me back in the 1980s and to Tony Benn.

“The key part of that is not just the smearing by some MPs, it’s the fact that four billionaires own three quarters of the papers that the British people read. I mean Murdoch, Lord Rothermere and the Barclay brothers. They will do anything to prevent a Labour prime minister who’s going to make them start paying their fair share of tax, because they’re all tax dodgers.”

Corbyn has said he would raise taxes on the rich and clamp down on corporate tax avoidance if elected.

Lord Rothermere has non-dom status, meaning he avoids tax on foreign earnings, while Rupert Murdoch is a US citizen and the Barclay brothers do not live in the UK despite holding many of their interests in the country. The Mail, Sun, Times and Telegraph have all run overwhelmingly negative stories about Corbyn since he became Labour leader.

Livingstone also told RT that “smears” from the rightwing media would be “unremitting”, but that Corbyn “won’t change his policies because of these smears. He’ll dig in there and fight on through, and I think that’s beginning to come across to people.”

Livingstone later confirmed to the Guardian that be believes fear of a potential clampdown on tax avoidance was driving the negative coverage of Corbyn and the Labour party.

He said: “The Barclay brothers, Rothermere and Murdoch have been tax avoiding on a grand scale for years and it’s completely and utterly outrageous.

“That’s why they would do anything to stop a Labour government. They know they will suffer badly under a Corbyn government.”

Livingstone has had a fractious relationship with the press, including during his time as mayor in 2005 when he said an Evening Standard journalist was behaving like a concentration camp guard.

Telegraph Media Group, Daily Mail & General Trust and News UK had not responded to a request for comment at the time of publication.

