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Private Eye's offshore property map View fullscreen

Click the above image to take you to Private Eye's offshore property map - highlighting which UK property was bought with offshore companies.

In the wake of the latest developments in the Panama Papers saga, we reveal the billions of pounds worth of Merseyside property bought using offshore companies.

Exclusive ECHO analysis has revealed that between 1999 and 2014, investors bought at least £3.75bn worth of property on Merseyside using offshore companies - including tax havens such as the Cayman Islands, Panama and Jersey.

Property records of 2,500 Merseyside addresses, including some right in the heart of Liverpool, have appeared on the list.

In 2007 a company in Jersey bought a property in Williamson Square in the city centre for £2.5m plus VAT.

Two companies in the Bahamas paid £6.9m between them to acquire 21-23 Church Street in 2008.

Some of the records show huge multi-million pound sums of money changing hands.

One of the largest on the list was a £111m deal for a company in Cyprus to buy Ralli House on Old Hall Street in 2008.

There is nothing stopping you buying property through a company based outside the UK - but many of these companies are in ‘tax havens’ such as Bermuda.

A lack of publicly available data in some of these places means it’s often very difficult to know who is behind these companies.

That means working out ultimately who owns British property held offshore is often practically an impossible task.

What are the Panama Papers?

The spotlight is back on offshore dealings after the so-called ‘Panama Papers’ data leak.

Millions of documents were leaked from Mossack Fonseca, a law firm in Panama, that gave a hint of the scale of offshore finance.

The disclosures have already led to the stepping aside of the Icelandic Prime Minister, while David Cameron has taken the unprecedented step of publishing details from his personal finances after it was revealed that his late father was a client of the Panamanian law firm and ran an offshore fund.

The Echo arrived at this £3.75bn figure by analysing separate data from the Land Registry collated by Private Eye magazine.

The real figure is likely to be higher as some of the records don’t have prices in them, and some of them include and exclude VAT and weren’t included in the total.