The Dutch Banks ING and ABN AMRO set up dozens of companies for their clients in island tax havens to assist their customers to hide taxes, accoridng to reports by The International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ).
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ING and ABN AMRO, reportedly, registered several companies in offshore refuges with beaches and low tax rates such as the British Virgin Islands, the Cook Islands and the Malaysian island of Labuan, as revealed by ICIJ investigations alongside Dutch newspaper Trouw.
Trouw found the information in leaked documents and emails from two companies – Singapore-based Portcullis TrustNet and British Virgin Islands-based Commonwealth Trust Limited – that specialise in helping customers set up and manage companies in offshore centers known as havens for individuals who want to reduce their taxes.
The companies set up by the two Dutch banks have names such as Thriving Capital, Capital Plus Worldwide, Wise Bonus Group and Billion Giant Development. According to reports, so-called ‘nominee’ companies enabled identities of many of the people involved in the companies that ING and ABN AMRO set up through offshore services firms to be obscured. These nominee companies acted as stand-in directors or shareholders, while the actual owners remained in the background.
However, ING and ABN AMRO, reportedly, said they have never been party to tax evasion.
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By GlobalData"The companies were set up for international clients and always in compliance with local and international laws," ABN AMRO said in a statement.
ING, reportedly, said that because the bank divisions that managed such companies have since been sold, the lender is unable to explain the reason for the use of such structures.
The ICIJ, based in Washington, has obtained more than 2.5 million files detailing offshore transactions and assets held in offshore tax havens.
The hard drive, containing 260 gigabytes of the data, is around one hundred sixty times larger than the two gigabytes of US diplomatic cables made public by Wikileaks in 2010.
The names of thousands of people across the globe have been revealed and their wealth management plans disclosed.
