ICIJ’s “Offshore Leaks” probe has ignited reactions around the globe – sparking official investigations, sweeping policy changes and high-profile resignations.

Since the series of stories – based on a leak of 2.5 million secret offshore records – began rolling out in April 2013, responses have come rapidly, from India, Mongolia, France and dozens of other nations. The European Union’s top tax official has called Offshore Leaks “the most significant trigger” behind Europe’s newfound resolve to crack down on offshore hideaways and global tax dodging.

“We're in a completely different context today” because of the Offshore Leaks revelations, Belgium’s secretary of state said. “It’s a new world.”

Among the latest impacts and responses:

European Parliament voted overwhelmingly in favor of Public registries listing real, flesh-and-blood owners of companies and trusts are a step closer in the EU after thevoted overwhelmingly in favor of new anti-money laundering laws today

The measure will crack down on individuals and companies that hide assets in secretive offshore entities, which have often been linked to tax evasion, money laundering and corruption. The use of offshore havens by prominent European politicians and business leaders was revealed last year by ICIJ’s Offshore Leaks investigation. “Crucial facilitators of illicit money flows are secretive corporate structures operating in and through secrecy jurisdiction, often also referred to as tax havens,” state the proposed new rules. The resolutions – one on anti-money laundering rules and the other on closer vigilance of fund transfers – were approved by committees in February, and in March passed through the European Parliament by 643 votes to 30 and 627 votes to 33 respectively. The draft legislation will be handed over to the next Parliament for further action after elections in May, but will require the support of member states for implementation should the new rules be approved. So far, only the UK has formally pledged to create a public ownership registry of companies.

A leading political party in Taiwan vowed to promote a new measure to crack down on offshore tax avoidance as its top agenda item. The Democratic Progressive Party,Taiwan’s leading opposition party, said that it would seek to pass an amendment to Taiwan’s Income Tax Act prohibiting corporations from using overseas subsidiaries and paper companies to avoid taxation. The proposal came days after ICIJ and its partner in Taiwan, CommonWealth Magazine, revealed that more than 16,000 Taiwanese, including more than a dozen billionaire family owners of some of Taiwan’s largest corporations, owned offshore companies.

The tax commissioner of Chin a , Wang Jun, pledged that China would step up its participation in international efforts to combat tax evasion and crack down on tax fraud within the nation. The move came as Chinese authorities were still scrambling to block internet access in China to the China Leaks reports by ICIJ and its partners.

Chinese authorities moved aggressively to block online access to news reports exposing the secrecy-cloaked offshore holdings of China’s political and financial elites. Censorship of the latest investigation, which draws on previously secret records of nearly 22,000 clients with addresses in mainland China and Hong Kong, was unusual in its broad international scope. In addition to ICIJ’s own website, Chinese authorities blocked the sites of ICIJ publishing partners including Spain’s El País , Le Monde , Süddeutsche Zeitung in Germany, the Canadian Broadcasting Corp., and the U.K. and U.S. editions of The Guardian , according to reports from news organizations and analytics by GreatFire.org.

In Beijing, a spokesman for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs Qin Gang dismissed the story calling it “hardly convincing” and said it raises “suspicions over the motives behind it."

Incorporations of new offshore companies in the British Virgin Islands declined sharply last year, falling 21 percent from 2012. The change echoes a recent report by the company Offshore Incorporations Limited that found that ICIJ's Offshore Leaks had created a "crisis of confidence" in the offshore industry, with more than three-quarters of the offshore professionals it surveyed said that ICIJ’s stories have reduced demand for offshore financial vehicles or prompted clients to move their business from one haven to another. Most of the secret accounts exposed by Offshore Leaks were incorporated in the BVI.

The recent attention to financial secrecy has also prompted the BVI and the Cayman Islands to enter into consultations on whether they should develop a registry that reveals the real owners of companies incorporated there, known as a “beneficial ownership” registry. UK Prime Minister David Cameron has been pressing British territories such as the BVI and the Caymans to improve their financial transparency, and pledged last fall to make the UK the first country in the world to create a publicly available beneficial ownership registry. A recent paper issued by the BVI solicited comments from the public and “in particular” the financial services industry on whether it should create an ownership registry.

BVI Cayman Islands pledged last fall recent paper The number of Germans voluntarily disclosing secret offshore accounts tripled in 2013, according to the chairman of the German tax union , Thomas Eigenthaler. The disclosures are expected to result in a surge of revenue to the German treasury. Eigenthaler said that ICIJ’s Offshore Leaks investigation was a major factor that sparked the increased disclosures, as well as the admission by a prominent soccer club manager and former star player that he had a secret bank account in Switzerland.

The Deputy Prime Minister of Russia , Igor Shuvalov, has repatriated his and his wife’s offshore assets to comply with a Russian law prohibiting state officials from holding their wealth abroad. An offshore company belonging to Shuvalov’s wife, Olga Shuvalov, was revealed in April by ICIJ. Shuvalov, a close ally of President Vladimir Putin, had pledged to return the assets to Russia soon after they were exposed. The move comes during a broad crackdown on offshore tax avoidance by Putin. Last week, Putin announced that Russian-owned companies registered in offshore jurisdictions would be forced to pay Russian taxes, and that companies registered abroad would be barred from getting funding from the budget or from state banks.

The European Parliament voted last week to strengthen its requirements for automatic exchange of tax data between EU member nations. The new rules, approved by 360 votes to 59, will require nations to collect and share data by 2017 on additional types of income such as employment, property and capital gains. In endorsing the measure, the Parliament voted to reject the “availability principle,” which would limit nations’ data sharing obligations to information that they decided independently to collect. “This important measure… responds to the challenges raised by [ICIJ's] Offshore Leaks and the staggering €1 trillion annual losses of tax revenues in the EU,” stated a summary of the reform that was prepared by the European Parliament’s Green Party.

The Danish Tax Minister announced a plan to crack down on offshore tax havens on the day after the last of a four-part series of documentaries about tax havens was aired by ICIJ's Danish partner, DR Documentary at Danish Broadcasting Corporation. Danish tax authorities will devote $7.3 million to pursue both individuals who hide money offshore and their professional advisers. The plan is expected to result in "a substantial number of new cases about illegal use of tax havens," said Holger K. Nielsen, the Danish Tax Minister. The documentaries exposed reliance on offshore havens by a leading Danish bank as well as a major law firm. One film used a hidden camera to reveal Jyske Bank, Denmark's third largest bank, advising an undercover journalist posing as a wealthy client to stash his money offshore in a plan that experts described as immoral and in some parts illegal. Others revealed the offshore tax advice given by Bech-Bruun, one of Denmark's leading law firms, and by the massive accounting firm EY.

Authorities in Ireland have recovered 4.3 million euros in settlements after receiving offshore tax data shared by French authorities, and are expecting “a very significant amount of data” on offshore holdings from the governments of U.S., Britain and Australia. The French data was obtained from Herve Falciani, a whistleblower and former employee of HSBC. Much of the data from the U.S., Britain and Australia was initially unveiled in Offshore Leaks.

The Colombian government announced new regulations that will slap a 33-percent tax on financial transactions between Colombian companies or individuals and third parties in 44 countries identified as tax havens. “The party is over for those who were taking advantage of tax havens,” Mauricio Cárdenas, the country´s economics minister, told local journalists. Colombia’s top tax official, Juan Ricardo Ortega, said ICIJ’s Offshore Leaks stories “without doubt helped the government push forward regulations” that had been blocked for nearly a decade. The secret offshore files obtained by ICIJ revealed that the sons of former Colombian president Álvaro Uribe were shareholders in a British Virgin Islands company.

Tax authorities in India say they have sent notices to more than 500 individuals whose offshore holdings were revealed earlier this year by ICIJ and The Indian Express. These individuals included two members of Parliament and several prominent industrialists, and the inquiries from the income tax department seek details and transactions of their offshore companies and trusts. A new list of individuals with offshore holdings found in the Offshore Leaks database was also published earlier this week, and included a decorated former civil service officer and the wife of Delhi’s energy secretary.

South Korean authorities announced they had uncovered evidence that the family of former dictator Chun Doo-Hwan had engaged in illegal offshore transactions. Earlier this year, ICIJ and the Korea Center for Investigative Reporting revealed that Chun’s son, Chun Jae-kook, had a secret offshore company in the British Virgin Islands. On October 8 the Korea Customs Service announced that it had found that offshore companies held by Chun’s family, including those belonging to Chun Jae-Kook, were involved in illegal foreign currency transactions. The Korea Customs Service said the transactions were intended to evade taxes and that it had informed Korean state prosecutors of its findings. The developments are the latest in a series of responses to ICIJ and the Korea Center for Investigative Journalism’s reporting, which have also included raids by Korean prosecutors on both men’s homes and an agreement by Chun’s family to pay $154 million in fines.

The Anti-Corruption Commission in Bangladesh decided on September 30 to open an investigation into the offshore activities of Kazi Zafarullah, a leading member of Bangladesh’s governing Awami League political party. In July, ICIJ and its reporting partners at the Bangladeshi daily New Age revealed that Zafarullah and his wife, Nilufer Zafar, were directors and shareholders of two offshore companies. The couple had also opened a joint account at the Singaporean branch of the Swiss bank UBS AG. The Anti-Corruption Commission decided to investigate Zafarullah’s activities after a two-month assessment of ICIJ and New Age’s findings, an official with the commission said.

The son of disgraced former South Korean president Chun Doo-hwan issued a public apology and vowed that his family would pay the government $154 million in fines related to corruption during Chun’s rule. Prior to the announcement, the former dictator’s family had claimed for years that Chun was bankrupt and unable to pay the fines. But earlier this year, ICIJ and the Korea Center for Investigative Journalism revealed that Chun’s son, Chun Jae-kook, had a secret offshore company in the British Virgin Islands. Chun Jae-kook denied any connection between his offshore holdings and his father, but South Korean prosecutors recently raided both men’s homes in a search for hidden assets.

Members of the G20 announced new measures to combat offshore tax evasion, including a plan to automatically share tax data among G20 nations by the end of 2015. Today’s G20 Leaders Declaration, released from a summit in St. Petersburg, Russia, also pledged the G20’s assistance to developing countries seeking to establish automatic tax information sharing, but stopped short of providing a timeline for doing so. According to the advocacy group Global Financial Integrity, illicit financial flows cost developing countries nearly $6 trillion between 2001 and 2010.

South Korea has ordered 11 individuals named in the Offshore Leaks investigation to pay a total of $64.6 million for using offshore paper companies to evade taxes. According to Yonhap News Agency, South Korea’s state news service, the country’s National Tax Service reviewed a list of Koreans suspected of running paper companies in offshore locales that was published by ICIJ and the Korea Center for Investigative Journalism. Thirty-nine of those individuals were chosen for further investigation, and today’s news marks the completion of 11 of those cases.

Australian tax authorities said they are stepping up efforts to crack down on corporate tax dodging and taking a hard look at wealthy Australians and small companies with offshore holdings following “Offshore Leaks” . The Australian Tax Office ’s plan includes 680 reviews and 115 audits of individuals and small businesses suspected of using offshore hideaways help them avoid taxes.

India’s Finance Minister said government probes into the offshore holdings of hundreds of Indians have made significant headway. “I am reviewing the progress every fortnight and can say that not a single case will go unpursued,” Finance Minister P Chidambaram said. The government’s effort was sparked by a joint investigation by ICIJ and The Indian Express.

Leaders of Britain’s overseas territories – long known as key cogs in the global tax haven system – have agreed to begin sharing tax information with other countries . UK Prime Minister David Cameron said officials from Britain’s network of territories and dependencies have pledged to sign on to an international convention that provides for automatic exchange of information among tax authorities. I commend their leadership and I look to other international partners to work with their own territories to reach similar agreements ,” Cameron said The British Virgin Islands, Bermuda and other UK overseas territories and dependencies also agreed to begin working to remove the veil of secrecy that often hides who owns offshore companies, Cameron said. . He called the agreement a “very positive step forward” in the fight to ensure that “those who want to evade taxes have nowhere to hide.”

After meeting with President Barack Obama at the White House, British Prime Minister David Cameron made a strong call to tackle what he called “the scourge of tax evasion,” one of the key topics in next month’s G8 meeting in Ireland. “We need to know who really owns a company, who profits from it, whether taxes are paid. And we need a new mechanism to track where multinationals make their money and where they pay their taxes so we can stop those that are manipulating the system unfairly,” Cameron said.

British, U.S. and Australian tax authorities announced that they are pursuing tax evasion investigations based on a cache of offshore documents that link to the Cook Islands, Singapore and the Cayman Islands, among other jurisdictions. The secret records are believed to include those obtained by ICIJ and that are the basis of the Offshore Leaks investigation. British tax authorities said the files “reveal extensive use of complex offshore structures to conceal assets by wealthy individuals and companies.” The three agencies plan to share the information with their counterparts from other countries in what could be the beginnings of one of the largest tax investigations in history.



Canada's revenue minister Gail Shea announced a $30 million commitment to fight tax evasion and target the practice of hiding money in offshore accounts, and the formation of an international tax expert "SWAT team". Asked if her department now has the list of 450 Canadian names contained within the documents obtained by ICIJ, Shea said: "We currently don’t have the list and I can assure you that we’re looking at all of our options. We’re working with our international partners to get that list."



announced a $30 million commitment to fight tax evasion and target the practice of hiding money in offshore accounts, and the formation of an international tax expert "SWAT team". Asked if her department now has the list of 450 Canadian names contained within the documents obtained by ICIJ, Shea said: "We currently don’t have the list and I can assure you that we’re looking at all of our options. We’re working with our international partners to get that list." The UK Treasury announced that following the lead of the Cayman Islands, all British overseas territories – including Bermuda, the British Virgin Islands, Anguilla, Montserrat and the Turks and Caicos Islands – have agreed to share information about individuals holding bank accounts in their jurisdictions with the UK, France, Germany, Italy and Spain.



UK Treasury announced The South China Morning Post reported that the new information exchanges will have real implications for Hong Kong and China companies, which do significant business through the Cayman islands, the British Virgin Islands and other offshore locales.

Luxembourg's Finance Minister Luc Frieden says he is open to greater transparency of its banks in order to cooperate further with foreign tax authorities.



says he is open to greater transparency of its banks in order to cooperate further with foreign tax authorities. The Indian Finance Minister P. Chidambaram said an inquiry had been initiated by the authorities against individuals whose names figured in the global media report. “Yes. We have taken note of the names and inquiries have been put in motion in respect of the names that have been exposed,” he told a press conference.

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