Conservative President Admits Tax Mistakes

Nadhim Zahawi could owe up to five million euros, he alleges, for “lack of care” in the sale of shares in his company.

The chairman of Britain’s Conservative and Unionist Party, Nadhim Zahawi, has publicly confessed that he made “mistakes” in paying tax on the proceeds from the sale of shares in his company, although tax inspectors do not consider this a deliberate evasion. Zahawi’s confession comes after the news revealed by the press about this case and the pressure from the opposition, which he has not appeased.

The entanglement is based in Gibraltar, where there are law firms specializing in the creation of ‘trusts’, legal documents that articulate the administration of money or other assets on behalf of unidentified persons. Although greater transparency has removed Gibraltar from the OECD’s blacklist of tax havens, these instruments are aimed at lowering the taxes they would have to pay in other jurisdictions.

Zahawi claims he did not create any such structure and that Gibraltar-based Balshore Investments Limited is his father’s vehicle for holding shares he gave him as founder and adviser to ‘YouGov’, the successful survey and marketing firm. that Zahawi created in 2000 with the German Stefan Shakespeare. Both met working for Jeffrey Archer, novelist and party vice president, sentenced to prison for perjury.

When Zahawi was appointed Finance Minister, on July 5, replacing Rishi Sunak, British media already published news that pointed to the possibility that the new head of the United Kingdom Treasury had opaque accounts in tax havens.

Zahawi, whose family belonged to an elite Iraqi government, called the articles publishing investigations into the Balshore company in Gibraltar libelous. 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 continued as minister for a month on a provisional basis – he decided to clarify his situation with the British treasury. .

The Father, Benefited

He alleges that the inspectors and his representatives concluded that he did not benefit from the Gibraltarian company’s sale of shares in his company ‘YouGov’ in a phased process that ended in 2018. His father and perhaps others benefited. family members, but the inspectors did warn him that he had awarded his father more shares than he could give him as founder. That would be the “error due to lack of care”, which would have been made by the current person in charge of organizing the finances of the British Conservative Party.

English media estimate that the total payment of taxes owed by Zahawi, who as president of the party has a seat in the Cabinet, is around five million euros. Amount that would include a penalty that could range from 350,000 euros to one million. The existence of this penalty, in any case, would suggest that it is something more than a simple “error”.

The deputy leader of the Labor Party, Angela Rayner, affirms that β€œin the story of Nadim Zahawi the accounts do not add up; the position of the man who until recently was in charge of the tax system in the UK, and whom the Prime Minister appointed Chairman of the Conservative Party, is untenable”, adding that “the time has come when Rishi Sunak must sack him of his Cabinet.”

This article is originally published on hoy.es