Several high profile politicians have come under fire following the leak of 1.3 internal files from a off-shore register located in the Bahamas.
The Home Secretary, Amber Rudd, is one of the key individuals to have been uncovered as involved by the compromising findings. According to investigations conducted by The Guardian, Ms Rudd has been revealed to have connections to a fund in which a director was convicted for propagating misleading statements to prospective and existing investors.
Similarly, former EU commissioner Neelie Kroes has also been exposed in the leak, and was forced to issue a subsequent apology for breaching the code of conduct. Kroes is culpable of failing to disclose her directorship position in an offshore company, whilst simultaneously investigating multinationals. Kroes issued a formal statement through her lawyer, who stated “My client agrees that formally she should have declared this directorship … Mrs Kroes will inform the president of the European commission of this oversight and will take full responsibility for it.”
This revelation comes just months after the Panama Papers scandal, which revealed off-shore activities of former Prime Minister David Cameron, amongst others. Cameron has recently abdicated from his MP position for Witney, following a tumultuous summer in which the Brexit vote saw the demise of his premiership.
However, various legislation remains in place which has meant that any attempt to initiate investigations into any holdings in the Bahamas remains a difficult endeavour. Unlike other offshore locations such as the Cayman Islands, registry details in the Bahamas are harder to ascertain and there is no concrete legal requirement to disclose directorships to the authorities.
The ICIJ director, Gerard Ryle, said of this obstacle, “We believe this kind of basic information, the names of people who are linked to what companies, is something that should be openly available – just as the former prime minister David Cameron himself once indicated,”
“We are publishing this information as a public service”, he added.
The Bahamas harbours around $223 billion (£172bn) in off-shore funds, 26 times its own national GDP.
