Pressure mounted on Prime Minister David Cameron on Tuesday to impose “direct rule” on British overseas territories after several of them figured as tax havens in the leaked Panama Papers that have caused ripples around the world.
The British Virgin Islands received more foreign direct investment last year than the major emerging economies of India and Brazil combined, a United Nations survey said on Tuesday. Brazil and India got 63 billion and 28 billion respectively.
Close relatives of China’s top leaders have held secretive offshore companies in tax havens that helped shroud the Communist elite’s wealth, a leaked cache of documents reveals. As the report was released several western newspapers, news agencies and websites, some of them with the mandarin version, were hacked in China.
Tax havens such as Bermuda and the Cayman Islands will work more closely with Britain and other European countries to fight tax evasion, British finance minister George Osborne said.