Nadhim Zahawi could owe up to five million euros, he claims, for “lack of care” in the sale of shares in his company
UK Conservative and Unionist Party chairman Nadhim Zahawi has publicly confessed to making “mistakes” in paying tax on the proceeds from the sale of shares in his company, although tax inspectors do not consider this to be deliberate evasion. Zahawi’s confession comes after news revealed by the press about this case and pressure from the opposition, which he has not appeased.
The entanglement is based in Gibraltar, where there are law firms that specialize in creating “trusts,” legal documents that articulate the management of money or other assets on behalf of unidentified individuals. While greater transparency has removed Gibraltar from the OECD’s blacklist of tax havens, these instruments are designed to reduce the taxes they would have to pay in other jurisdictions.
Zahawi claims that he has not created such a structure and that Gibraltar-based Balshore Investments Limited is his father’s vehicle for holding shares given to him as founder and advisor of ‘YouGov’, the successful research and marketing company which Zahawi founded in 2000 with the German Stefan Shakespeare. Both met while working for Jeffrey Archer, novelist and vice president of the party, sentenced to prison for perjury.
When Zahawi was appointed Chancellor of the Exchequer on July 5, replacing Rishi Sunak, British media was already publishing news pointing to the possibility that the new head of the British Treasury had opaque accounts in tax havens.
Zahawi, whose family belonged to an elite Iraqi government, called the articles about investigations into the Balshore company in Gibraltar defamatory. But now he says that by accepting the portfolio of the Treasury – the next day he asked Johnson, who had appointed him, to resign and remain minister for a month for the time being – he decided to clarify his situation with the British Treasury .
He claims that the inspectors and his representatives concluded that he did not benefit from the Gibraltar company’s sale of shares in his company ‘YouGov’ in a staged process that ended in 2018. His father and perhaps others benefited from relatives, but the inspectors do. warned him that he had given his father more shares than he could give him as founder. That would be the “mistake of carelessness” made by the current person responsible for organizing the finances of the British Conservative Party.
English media estimate that the total tax payment owed by Zahawi, who sits in the cabinet as party chairman, is around five million euros. Amount that would include a fine that can range from 350,000 euros to one million. The existence of this punishment at least suggests that it is more than a simple “mistake”.
Labor Party deputy leader Angela Rayner confirms that “in Nadim Zahawi’s story, the accounts don’t add up; the position of the man who until recently was in charge of the tax system in the UK and who was appointed Chairman of the Conservative Party by the Prime Minister is untenable”, adding that “the time has come for Rishi Sunak to sack him of his locker.”
Source: La Verdad
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