Paradise Papers: EU pushes for tax blacklist after leak

EU finance ministers sought today to break resistance against creating Europe's first ever blacklist of tax havens after new revelations from the "Paradise Papers" showed how major firms escape tax.

The 28 members of the European Union have struggled for over a year to finalise a list of non-EU tax havens, with smaller countries such as Ireland, Malta and Luxembourg loath to scare off major firms headquartered in their low tax capitals.

Soon-to-quit Britain has also drawn up resistance, hoping to protect the near zero-tax rates offered in several of its dependencies, such as Jersey or the British Virgin Islands, that have been identified in the series of leaks that also include Panama Papers and the Luxleaks scandal.

The island of Jersey, a few kilometres (miles) off the coast of France, was where the latest reports said Apple shifted much of its offshore wealth when Ireland changed its laws under pressure from the EU.

"It is important that this list comes out (...) in 2017, it must be credible and up to the challenge," said EU Economics Affairs Commissioner Pierre Moscovici, who is leading the blacklist effort.

The EU ministers will try to bridge their differences and draw up an official list of unwanted tax havens in December, whittling down an initial list of 92 countries finalised last year.

Sources said EU officials have warned about 60 countries that their tax policies may be problematic and at risk of blacklisting, demanding further information before a November 18 deadline.
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Paradise leaks: Nothing wrong in Russia-tied investments, says Wilbur Ross

US Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross said on Monday he had done nothing wrong and did properly disclose his investments in a shipping firm that has significant business ties to Russian President Vladimir Putin's inner circle.

Ross was responding in media interviews to reports on Sunday about his investments stemming from the so-called Paradise Papers, a trove of leaked documents about an offshore investment that relate to the affairs of wealthy individuals and institutions ranging from Ross to Britain's Queen Elizabeth and trading firm Glencore.

The documents were obtained by Germany's Sueddeutsche Zeitung newspaper and shared with the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) and some media outlets. Reuters has not independently verified the documents.

"There is nothing wrong with anything that was done," Ross told CNBC, adding that he had not considered resigning following Sunday's report. Ross is a billionaire investor who is helping to shape Republican President Donald Trump's trade policy.

"There was disclosure, there is no impropriety and if people draw a contrary conclusion that's because the papers have twisted the story and made it into something that it's not there," Ross told the BBC.

U.S. media said partnerships used by Ross have a 31 percent stake in Navigator Holdings, which the New York Times said earns millions of dollars a year transporting gas for Russian petrochemical firm Sibur.
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Qatar blockade and Saudi Arabia: Could there be a power shift in Doha?

When it erupted in June 2017, the “Qatar crisis” drew immediate speculation that the emirate’s enemies, who accuse it of sponsoring terrorism and destabilising the region, were preparing for some sort of military action.

After all, since the inconclusive resolution to an earlier dispute with Qatar in 2014, Saudi Arabia and the UAE have been determined to take a bolder and more assertive stance, bloodily intervening in Yemen and, according to recently leaked emails purportedly sent by the UAE’s ambassador in Washington, at one point even coming “pretty close to doing something in Qatar”.

Whereas Barack Obama was highly unlikely to ever support such action against Doha, later hinting that he would no longer reflexively side with Saudi Arabia in its squabbles, Donald Trump’s administration seemed at first to re-open the door to more drastic measures.

Trump pointedly chose Saudi Arabia for his first official overseas visit, on which he signed several big-ticket arms deals. And just hours after Riyadh severed relations with Doha, he tweeted that, when it comes to terrorism funding, “all reference was pointing to Qatar” and that “perhaps this will be the beginning of the end to the horror of terrorism”.

But the White House was soon apprised of the full extent of the US’s military facilities in Qatar, including the difficult-to-move forward headquarters of US Central Command (CENTCOM), and the secretary of state, Rex Tillerson, hurriedly attempted to strike a more conciliatory tone. For a moment, it seemed any immediate danger to Doha had subsided. Indeed, as recently reported, Trump had apparently given an emphatic “no” to any military action, preferring to leave the quarrelling Gulf states to their own devices.

Nonetheless, even as the days dragged into weeks and then months, it seemed that Saudi Arabia and the UAE, along with their allies in the “Anti-Terror Quartet”, Bahrain and Egypt, were gaining the upper hand.
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