The Panama Papers leak threw a spanner in the works for the companies and very rich individuals who live to squirrel their cash away in offshore accounts to avoid tax (we have an explainer HERE if your booze-addled brain isn’t quite around it yet). Now our fearless leader Malcolm Turnbull‘s name has popped up in the massive database of the leak.
The Australian Financial Review reports that he’s named as a director of Star Mining NL, an Australian mining company which was set up for a gold prospect in Siberia back in the early 90’s. Former Premier of New South Wales Neville Wran was also a director.
Turns out that Star Mining and its subsidiary Star Technology Services – which had both Turnbull and Wran as directors too – were set up and administrated by Panama Papers firm Mossack Fonseca.
Right?! There’s no indication that Turnbull acted improperly or illegally in any part of this arrangement, and a spokesperson told the AFR that he did not know it was administered by Mossack Fonseca.
There are allegations that Star Mining made donations to Russian politicians, which is more firmly in sketch territory, but the Turnbull camp has also denied any knowledge of that either before or after the event.
Both Turnbull and Wran stepped down from both companies in 1995. This won’t crater his career like it did, say, the Icelandic Prime Minister, but it’s a minor embarrassment when many people are convinced that the Panama Papers leak is a handy database of enormous crims, cutthroats and psychopaths.
Source: AFR.
Photo: Getty Images / Stefan Postles.
