The results of a long-term study of reproductive health, published in the British Medical Journal, have revealed that one in two hundred US women claim to have given birth without ever having had sexual intercourse.
The findings were based on a study of 7,870 women and girls aged 15 to 28, as part of the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health, which ran from 1995 to 2009.
The Christmas issue of the BMJ reports that, of the women who took part in the study, 45 (0.5%) reported at least one virgin pregnancy, "unrelated to the use of assisted reproductive technology."
In short, they claimed to have conceived - yet had not had vaginal intercourse or in-vitro fertilisation (IVF).
The BMJ article notes that virgin births, or parthenogenesis (from the Greek parthenos for virgin and genesis for birth), can occur in non-humans as a consequence of "asexual reproduction, where growth and development of the embryo occurs without fertilization".
The article notes that as well as the story of the birth of Jesus to the Virgin Mary, parthenogenesis often appears in popular culture, "including the Spielberg blockbuster Jurassic Park3 and the 2008 Dr Who episode “Partners in Crime.”
For the study of putative virgin pregnancies, researchers at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill analyzed data from the thousands of teenage girls and young women who took part in the long-running study.
They found that the girls who had become pregnant, despite claiming they had never had sex at the time of conception, shared some common characteristics.
Thirty-one per cent of the girls had signed a so-called 'chastity pledge', whereby they vow - usually for religious reasons - not to have sex. Fifteen per cent of non-virgins who became pregnant also said they had signed such pledges.
The 45 self-described virgins who reported having become pregnant and the 36 who gave birth were also more likely than non-virgins to say their parents never or rarely talked to them about sex and birth control.
About 28 per cent of the "virgin" mothers' parents (who were also interviewed) indicated they didn't have enough knowledge to discuss sex and contraception with their daughters, compared to 5 percent of the parents of girls who became pregnant and said they had had intercourse.
The authors of the study, entitled "Like a virgin (mother)", - say that such scientifically impossible claims show researchers must take care in interpreting self-reported behavior. Fallible memory, beliefs and wishes can cause people to err in what they tell scientists.
Richard Branson. Photograph: Bloomberg via Getty Images
The rich are different from you and me: they hire PR advisers. As night follows day, any criticism of Richard Branson will be met with a fierce counterblast from his troops. So it was last Friday, when a column in Branson's name appeared in the Guardian.
The Virgin boss was displeased with my piece on this page arguing that the hundreds of millions he and his partners made from the West Coast mainline had been handed to them by taxpayers. He wanted to rubbish the thesis, and reassure you that it simply wasn't true. As the headline on his article put it: "Hard work, not handouts, put our trains back on track." And the rather innovative way Sir Richard sought to persuade you of his case was by not addressing the main points and instead kicking up a load of sand.
First, he denied that the "serious money" to buy Northern Rock was fronted up by foreign investors. Tell that to the National Audit Office. In its May 2012 report on the sale of the Rock, the parliamentary auditors laid out the sources of the £772m paid for it. Virgin directly put up £200m; that compares with the £269m chipped in by the US fund manager Wilbur Ross and £50m from a private-equity fund based in Abu Dhabi. The remainder, reports the NAO, was a short-term bank loan "repaid using cash extracted from Northern Rock plc". How this £253m was taken out of the former building society we'll know for sure when the latest accounts are filed with Companies House, but to me it sounds a lot like the asset-stripping that was much talked about at the time. Whatever, my point stands: in the whip-round for buying the Rock, Virgin was not the major contributor.
Then there are the hundreds of millions you and I have given Virgin to run its railway. Branson's response here is particularly tortured: the facts won't allow him to deny receiving huge subsidies, but he does want to deny that our hard-earned money is what made the difference. To do that, he first makes out what a huge risk he took on with the West Coast franchise. Now, I wouldn't want to make out the pre-1997 line as some Elysian pleasure-rail. But you do have to wonder just how rickety this business venture was, given that over its 16 years of business, Virgin trains has only racked up a loss twice: in 1997 and 2006. Over that period, this tremendously precarious enterprise has yielded a pre-tax profit of £674m. The Virgin boss doth protest too much, I think; perhaps to drown out the sound of the cashtills ringing.
Finally, to the point Branson doesn't want us to discuss: the amount we've given to him. Let's go back to the report that prompted my earlier column. A group of researchers based at Manchester University's Centre for Research on Socio-Cultural Change looked at both the openly admitted subsidies (the £9bn-odd paid by us for upgrading the track used by Virgin) and the hidden handouts of train companies paying Network Rail super-low prices to use its lines. Under Railtrack, train operators used to pay £3bn a year in rail-access charges; now that figure has nearly halved to just over £1.5bn. Virgin is the third-biggest recipient of this secret subsidy, paying less in 2012 for using the track than it did in 2004. That is despite having a lovely new line to run on, which allows it to offer a more frequent and lucrative service. Without these subsidies, Branson and co would be in the red. But with them, it is taxpayers who are in the red: Network Rail has a debt of £30bn, which is growing at £5bn a year. This is money that will almost certainly have to be paid back by you and me.
I've said this before, but I have no particular grouse with Branson. I've taken Virgin flights and found them fine; I've also stood on a Virgin train from Rugby onwards, but such is life. I haven't been holding out for an invitation to Necker. But Virgin Rail is merely a player, a lobbyist and a big beneficiary of a terrible system, where Britons hand money to private companies who then claim to be running a profitable business while relying on a subsidy from us. Last week, we read about how the town of Fermanagh prepared for the upcoming G8 summit by sticking posters over its empty shopfronts to make them look bustling. Something similar is going on with the use of public money in the notionally private industry of rail: it's a Potemkin market, nothing more.
Branson's reply is part of a sector's attempt to duck this argument with the aid of bluster and selective facts. And since neither the government nor the train operators want to disrupt these secret handouts or to rip the veil away from our privatised system, it's easier for the press not to probe too deeply.
Yet poll after poll shows the public wants to take the rail network back into national ownership. That's all the more remarkable, given the lack of support from major political parties (it's left to Green MP Caroline Lucas to introduce a private-member's bill calling for renationalisation), and the vacuum in the media where serious discussion of alternatives to the current mess should be. Far easier, I guess, to have a secret £30bn debt with our names on it.
I once called Richard Branson a carpetbagger. A new report reveals that I was correct to say he built his business empire with millions from the taxpayers – only it's worse than I thought
Richard Branson: 'subsidy junkie'. Photograph: Sipa USA/Rex Features
Just over 18 months ago on this page, I called Richard Branson a carpetbagger. Surveying his greatest business hits, from trains to planes to cable, my piece noted a common method: the Virgin boss liked to move into industries sheltered from too much competition, pull subsidies out of taxpayers and then cash out.
That was the story of Virgin Rail (now 49% owned by Stagecoach); of Virgin Atlantic (where the same role is played by Singapore Airlines) and it certainly fits Virgin's takeover last year of Northern Rock, where Branson was really the frontman for the serious money from America and Abu Dhabi.
Sir Richard was not best pleased. Faster than you could say "stroppy tycoon on the phone", a response in his name appeared in the Guardian, accusing me of a "vicious" attack full of "vitriol". But admirable hand-waving aside, he did not rebut my argument: that for all of his talk of enterprise and getting employees "really motivated and steamed up", Branson has built his business empire with millions from you, me and other taxpayers.
Well, last Friday a report was published that, I'm sorry to say, proves me wrong. He's an even bigger subsidy junkie than I thought.
Produced by academics at Manchester University's Centre for Research on Socio-Cultural Change (Cresc), and published by the TUC, the study looks at how Britain's railways have fared over two decades of privatisation. It's a hefty publication – more than eight months in the making, running to 166 pages and with more detail on the rail network than any commuter will ever need.
But it boils down to one key finding: the only way Branson and the vast majority of train barons make their profits is through handouts from the taxpayer. And while you may know about the direct payments taken by Virgin and others, the Cresc team has also analysed another, indirect transfer from the public purse to private hands. By now, it's worth £30bn – yet it is barely acknowledged either by Network Rail or Westminster.
Let's deal with the open-air subsidies first. If you tot up all the direct subsidies Branson's west coast mainline service received between 1997 and 2012, and convert them to today's prices, you get a sum of £2.79bn handed over by us – before a single ticket has been sold. And it is certainly before you factor in the service's upgrade (worth around £9bn, and paid for by the public), and the fleet of Pendolino trains (again, largely subsidised by the government).
By 2012, Virgin Trains enjoyed spanking new rolling stock, a more frequent service and a superfast line that whisked passengers from London to Manchester in just two hours. With all that going for it, plus a booming economy up till 2007 and rising fuel prices, the company couldn't help but pull in the customers.
Most of the improvements were subbed by taxpayers, with Virgin paying the state an agreed amount in the last two years of the franchise. Yet Branson and his shareholders could declare a cumulative net profit of £538m and trouser £499m in total dividends. No wonder some canny infants like to play with train sets.
These sums are what got Virgin interested in rail in the first place. In his biography of Branson, Tom Bower records a phrase used by the billionaire's lieutenants while weighing up the west coast deal: "It's a licence to print money. Can't go wrong."
But there is another undisclosed source of cash enjoyed by Virgin and the rest of the industry. Network Rail has been cutting the track access charges levied on the train companies. Under its predecessor Railtrack, the fees were worth around £3bn a year; they're now nearly half that, at just over £1.5bn a year. This is an indirect subsidy given by the public to the train operators, and Virgin is the third-biggest recipient. So important is the handout that, were it taken away, Cresc estimates the company would have made a loss of up to £257m last year alone.
Just so there's no doubt on the numbers, the Cresc report was shown to the Association of Train Operating Companies weeks before it was published. The trade body had time to dismantle the maths; but while it evidently doesn't like the conclusions, it hasn't repudiated the figures. Years of indirect subsidies have left Network Rail £30bn in the red. This is debt guaranteed by the public, although very few people know about it.
What all this resembles is a looking-glass version of capitalism. The public are handing money to private businesses for them to take a clip and pay us back the rest. Just in case that wasn't ludicrous enough, remember that Virgin's parent company is listed in British Virgin Islands, a sunny tax haven that is a stop pretty far from Wigan. And as we've seen repeatedly with the east coast line, the ones who don't make a profit can simply walk away, dumping their service back in public hands. Heads they win, tails you lose.
Branson is not the sole offender here; he's simply the most flamboyant representative of a completely rotten system for siphoning money from the public into private hands. The entire industry, as Treasury adviser Shriti Vadera put it in 2001, is peopled by "thinly capitalised … profiteers of the worst kind". And as a former investment banker, she'd know what those looked like.
But the Virgin boss also loves to shout about the virtues of private ownership of public good. At the moment, he's lobbying hard to take control of the east coast mainline. If successful, he'll doubtless try to replicate his previous sweet deal, state-subsidised Pendolinos and all. And just like now, it will be us paying for it.
‘Somewhere between Margaret Thatcher and the fall of Lehman Brothers, there were signs of half-decent customer service.' Illustration by Andrzej Krauze
'A Coke is a Coke and no amount of money can get you a better Coke than the one the bum on the corner is drinking," said Andy Warhol. "All the Cokes are the same and all the Cokes are good."
Such was the capitalism that was embodied not just by Coca-Cola, but the Ford Motor Company – and named, towards the end of its dominance, "Fordism". Now, though, we are said to like our transactions personalised and touchy feely. Ergo a summer-long promotion titled "Share a Coke", whereby the usual logo has been replaced by 150 first names – from Aaron to Zoe, via Faisal, Josh, Lauren and Saima. That all this rather cuts across the imperious yet egalitarian brand that Warhol so loved does not seem to have occurred to anyone; nor, apparently, has the whole idea's air of awful tweeness (while writing this, I bought my obligatory "John" bottle from Marks & Spencer, and remained unmoved).
At Starbucks, meanwhile, they now insist that your hot caffeine also comes emblazoned with your name – written on a sticker, to be hollered by a barista. This scheme arrived in early 2012, in a similar flurry of faux-enlightened PR: "Have you noticed how everything seems a little impersonal nowadays?" ran the promotional text.
Unlike the Coke wheeze, though, it was also a see-through attempt at damage limitation: six months later, the company's byzantine tax arrangements would be under intense scrutiny. But in the ordinary world, Starbucks was already becoming a byword for sloppiness and mess, not to mention coffee that tastes like the hot milk my nan used to make me circa 1973. As a former 'Bucks addict, my own epiphany came in their branch in Birmingham's Bullring Centre, where the tables were piled high with dirty cups and plates, only two staff seemed to be on duty – and if the place had been an independent business, you would have taken one look and assumed it was rightly headed for the knacker's yard.
Yet Starbucks is still here, making handsome worldwide profits. Yes, after a major reputational wobble, it has nobly offered to throw £20m over two years at Her Majesty's Revenue & Customs. Hosanna! They now shout your name when they hand you your cup of warm milk and a plywood panini. But going to any of its outlets remains a dependably joyless experience, suggestive of something remarkable: the company is not so much too big to fail, as too big to really care. Once enough competitors are out of the way, it seems, modern branding can work magic: providing you avoid killing anyone, that enough people will carry on trudging through your doors, whatever happens
Running through a lot of this, I would imagine, is much the same business model: workforces hacked down to the bare minimum and poorly paid, the apparent belief that if you track your customer's buys via data accumulation and give them what you think they want, more quaint ideas of customer service can be dumped, fast.
To all this, there is an obvious enough response: hasn't a mixture of flimsy "personalisation" and arrogant business–as-usual always been the capitalist way? Perhaps. But somewhere between the arrival of Margaret Thatcher and the fall of Lehman Brothers, there were at least fleeting signs of an embrace of half-decent customer service – as proved by plenty of businesses, not least the big British supermarkets.
Bear with me, please. Though I cannot quite date them, I have clear memories of visiting Tesco, Asda and Sainsbury's, and realising that though they were strangling independent competitors, squeezing producers and offering an illusion of choice under which lay a remarkably Fordist way of operating, their customer service was actually very good. You may recall the dedicated bag-packers, or the staff's breezy openness to being sent to scour the aisles when you reached the checkout and realised you'd forgotten the broccoli .
More often than not, my own supermarket shopping now ends with an exasperated glimpse of gridlocked checkouts, and the usual trudge through the self-service terminals sometimes known as "the fast lane": a con trick that would have caused Marx and Engels to hoot with mirth, whereby the customer now doubles as the worker. I contacted Sainsbury's, Asda and Tesco to ask how many were now in operation, and what the increasing dominance of fast lanes meant. Their replies were uniformly evasive, and the one from Tesco was particularly grim: "We believe in giving our customers choice. Over a third of shoppers choose to use self-service tills, not least because they find them quicker and more convenient. For customers who need assistance, there is always a member of staff on hand." Somewhere in those words is the same arrogance you can taste in your average grande skinny cappuccino and granola bar.
There is, then, a new model of business, which rather puts me in mind of words uttered not by Andy Warhol but the market traders of the West Midlands. "Never make a mug of your punter," they used to say. But that is what modern business does. And strangest of all, contrary to all that stuff about consumer sovereignty, it seems to be not just getting away with it, but prospering.
'The British Virgin
Islands are perhaps rivalled only by Switzerland as a global capital for
the offshore industry'. Photograph: James Marshall/Corbis
It's a tumultuous time for the offshore industry. For decades,
there's been an uneasy equilibrium: opprobrium from campaigners, torpor
from regulators, apathy from the wider public, and delight for the
wealthy benefiting from the arrangements to cut their tax bill or avoid
regulatory scrutiny.
Recently, though, the rhetoric and action
have changed. In tougher economic times – for which the financial sector
has copped a huge amount of the blame – the public is more aggrieved by
tax avoidance arrangements than ever, while recent proposed offshore
crackdowns have been cautiously welcomed by campaigners as having the
potential to actually be effective.
Amid
this backdrop, and with ministers from George Osborne to Vince Cable
willing to speak out strongly against offshoring and tax avoidance, it's
easy to imagine the villains of the piece to be irresponsible foreign
nations – happy to shelter the mega-rich in offshore secrecy,
unconcerned about the tax avoided in other, larger countries.
If only the British government can prevail in these overseas battles, things will get better, it seems. But
such a stance ignores that one nation in particular has ties to
offshore havens everywhere. It's a veritable nexus of offshore
influence, related to havens in the Caribbean, and much closer to home.
That nation is, of course, the United Kingdom.
The clue is quite
often in the name. The British Virgin Islands are perhaps rivalled only
by Switzerland as a global capital for the offshore industry, with more
than 1m offshore companies registered on the Caribbean island
(population 31,900). Plaques for registration agents, solicitors and
more line almost every wall of the islands' tiny capital.
The islands are a British Overseas Territory:
legally under the jurisdiction of the UK (and with a British governor),
but in practice self-governed. Other havens with this UK imprimatur
include the Cayman islands, Gibraltar, and the Turks and Caicos Islands.
Closer
to home, the UK wields even more control over the crown dependencies:
Jersey, Guernsey and the Isle of Man, whose role in legal tax avoidance
techniques has been documented time and again for decades. Even
within the UK itself, little is done against tricks of the offshore
trade that have been known for decades.
In 1999, Sark islander Philip
Croshaw was struck off as a UK director for acting as a "nominee" – a sham director who hides a company's real controllers – for thousands of companies in the UK.
At
the time, then-trade minister Kim Howells said: "The government today
struck a fatal blow against the practice of so-called 'nominee
directorships' … The trade in providing 'nominee director' services from
the island of Sark has been a scandal … The courts have now effectively
outlawed this abuse."
And yet today – 14 years later – more than 175,000
UK companies have had directors based in offshore havens, and the
Guardian has identified 28 sham directors with tens of thousands of
companies between them.
In short, a huge string of the world's
foremost offshore havens have, at minimum, a strong and long-lasting
symbolic relationship with the UK, and in practice are susceptible to
significant influence and pressure from the UK government.
Even at
home, offshore practices known and deplored by governments for more
than a decade are still going strong. The temptation for campaigners and
government alike is to look overseas for the villains in the offshore
trade. The reality is more complex, and the trouble closer to home. The
upside of this is it means that if Britain really wants to tackle global
offshore secrecy, there's a lot it can do.
But so far, everywhere
– on its home turf, in its dependencies, and in its overseas
territories – the UK brand is on both sides of the fight. For Britain,
the battle against offshore tax havens – if it wants to fight it – begins at home.
The British Virgin Islands, the world's leading offshore haven used by an array of government officials and rich families to hide their wealth. Photograph: Duncan Mcnicol/Getty Images
Millions of internal records have leaked from Britain's offshore financial industry, exposing for the first time the identities of thousands of holders of anonymous wealth from around the world, from presidents to plutocrats, the daughter of a notorious dictator and a British millionaire accused of concealing assets from his ex-wife.
The leak of 2m emails and other documents, mainly from the offshore haven of the British Virgin Islands (BVI), has the potential to cause a seismic shock worldwide to the booming offshore trade, with a former chief economist at McKinsey estimating that wealthy individuals may have as much as $32tn (£21tn) stashed in overseas havens.
In France, Jean-Jacques Augier, President François Hollande's campaign co-treasurer and close friend, has been forced to publicly identify his Chinese business partner. It emerges as Hollande is mired in financial scandal because his former budget minister concealed a Swiss bank account for 20 years and repeatedly lied about it.
In Mongolia, the country's former finance minister and deputy speaker of its parliament says he may have to resign from politics as a result of this investigation.
But the two can now be named for the first time because of their use of companies in offshore havens, particularly in the British Virgin Islands, where owners' identities normally remain secret.
The naming project may be extremely damaging for confidence among the world's wealthiest people, no longer certain that the size of their fortunes remains hidden from governments and from their neighbours.
BVI's clients include Scot Young, a millionaire associate of deceased oligarch Boris Berezovsky. Dundee-born Young is in jail for contempt of court for concealing assets from his ex-wife.
Young's lawyer, to whom he signed over power of attorney, appears to control interests in a BVI company that owns a potentially lucrative Moscow development with a value estimated at $100m.
Another is jailed fraudster Achilleas Kallakis. He used fake BVI companies to obtain a record-breaking £750m in property loans from reckless British and Irish banks.
As well as Britons hiding wealth offshore, an extraordinary array of government officials and rich families across the world are identified, from Canada, the US, India, Pakistan, Indonesia, Iran, China, Thailand and former communist states.
The data seen by the Guardian shows that their secret companies are based mainly in the British Virgin Islands.
Sample offshore owners named in the leaked files include:
• Jean-Jacques Augier, François Hollande's 2012 election campaign co-treasurer, launched a Caymans-based distributor in China with a 25% partner in a BVI company. Augier says his partner was Xi Shu, a Chinese businessman.
• Mongolia's former finance minister. Bayartsogt Sangajav set up "Legend Plus Capital Ltd" with a Swiss bank account, while he served as finance minister of the impoverished state from 2008 to 2012. He says it was "a mistake" not to declare it, and says "I probably should consider resigning from my position".
• The president of Azerbaijan and his family. A local construction magnate, Hassan Gozal, controls entities set up in the names of President Ilham Aliyev's two daughters.
• The wife of Russia's deputy prime minister. Olga Shuvalova's husband, businessman and politician Igor Shuvalov, has denied allegations of wrongdoing about her offshore interests.
•A senator's husband in Canada. Lawyer Tony Merchant deposited more than US$800,000 into an offshore trust.
He paid fees in cash and ordered written communication to be "kept to a minimum".
• A dictator's child in the Philippines: Maria Imelda Marcos Manotoc, a provincial governor, is the eldest daughter of former President Ferdinand Marcos, notorious for corruption.
• Spain's wealthiest art collector, Baroness Carmen Thyssen-Bornemisza, a former beauty queen and widow of a Thyssen steel billionaire, who uses offshore entities to buy pictures.
• US: Offshore clients include Denise Rich, ex-wife of notorious oil trader Marc Rich, who was controversially pardoned by President Clinton on tax evasion charges. She put $144m into the Dry Trust, set up in the Cook Islands.
It is estimated that more than $20tn acquired by wealthy individuals could lie in offshore accounts. The UK-controlled BVI has been the most successful among the mushrooming secrecy havens that cater for them.
The Caribbean micro-state has incorporated more than a million such offshore entitiessince it began marketing itself worldwide in the 1980s. Owners' true identities are never revealed.
Even the island's official financial regulators normally have no idea who is behind them.
The British Foreign Office depends on the BVI's company licensing revenue to subsidise this residual outpost of empire, while lawyers and accountants in the City of London benefit from a lucrative trade as intermediaries.
They claim the tax-free offshore companies provide legitimate privacy. Neil Smith, the financial secretary of the autonomous local administration in the BVI's capital Tortola, told the Guardian it was very inaccurate to claim the island "harbours the ethically challenged".
He said: "Our legislation provides a more hostile environment for illegality than most jurisdictions".
Smith added that in "rare instances …where the BVI was implicated in illegal activity by association or otherwise, we responded swiftly and decisively".
The Guardian and ICIJ's Offshore Secrets series last year exposed how UK property empires have been built up by, among others, Russian oligarchs, fraudsters and tax avoiders, using BVI companies behind a screen of sham directors.
Such so-called "nominees", Britons giving far-flung addresses on Nevis in the Caribbean, Dubai or the Seychelles, are simply renting out their names for the real owners to hide behind.
The whistleblowing group WikiLeaks caused a storm of controversy in 2010 when it was able to download almost two gigabytes of leaked US military and diplomatic files.
The new BVI data, by contrast, contains more than 200 gigabytes, covering more than a decade of financial information about the global transactions of BVI private incorporation agencies. It also includes data on their offshoots in Singapore, Hong Kong and the Cook Islands in the Pacific.
-----
Profiles of leading secret account holders
Leading figures across the globe with secret overseas entities
Name: Bayartsogt Sangajav Offshore company: Legend Plus Capital Limited
One of Mongolia's most senior politicians says he is considering resigning from office after being confronted with evidence of his offshore entity and secret Swiss bank account.
"I shouldn't have opened that account. I should have included the company in my declarations," Bayartsogt Sangajav told the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ). "I don't worry about my reputation. I worry about my family. I probably should consider resigning from my position."
Bayartsogt, who says his account at one point contained more than $1 million, became his country's finance minister in September 2008, a position he held until a cabinet reshuffle in August 2012. He is now the deputy speaker of Parliament.
During those years he attended international meetings and served as governor of the Asian Development Bank and the European Bank of Reconstruction, pushing the case for his poor nation to receive foreign development assistance and investment.
Canada
Name: Tony Merchant Offshore Company: Merchant (2000) US Inc Trust
Colourful lawyer and former politician, married to Liberal party senator Pana Merchant. Known for challenges to the Canadian revenue agency over his tax payments . He has also been disciplined by the Law Society for "conduct unbecoming ." In 1998, launched Cook Islands trust with deposit of more than US$800,000 as settlor and initially as beneficiary. Sent fee payments in cash envelopes: the agents noted "All communications regarding this trust is to be kept to a minimum…Do not ever send faxes cos he will have a stroke about it"
Comment: Declines to comment
France
Name: Jean-Jacques Augier Offshore company: International Bookstores Ltd [IBL]
Publisher and Sinologist. Campaign treasurer of François Hollande for the 2012 presidential elections. They studied together at the prestigious National School of Management (ENA). Chief Executive of Eurane SA. Made large publishing investment in China 2005. Caymans-registered entity IBL, set up with 25% shareholding granted to BVI company Sinolinks Transworld Investment Consultancy, and 2.5% shareholding to a Hong Kong entity Capital Concord Developments Ltd.
Comment: He says partner in the offshore firm was Xi Shu, a businessman and a member of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference, a political advisory body.
Russia
Name: Olga Shuvalova Offshore companies: Plato Management & other BVI companies owned by Severin Enterprises Inc
Wife of Igor Shuvalov, a businessman and politician close to Putin , first deputy prime minister since 2008. In 2007, she is recorded as owning Severin Enterprises , set up via Moscow agency Amond & Smith. The dealings of another of its subsidiaries, Bahamas-registered Sevenkey Ltd, were detailed in a 2011 investigative article in Barron's, which tied the company to her husband, who has denied wrongdoing.
Comment: declines to comment
US
Name: Denise Rich Offshore company: The Dry Trust
Among nearly 4,000 American names is Denise Rich, a songwriter whose ex-husband, the oil trader Marc Rich, was pardoned by President Clinton as he left office in 2001, over tax evasion and racketeering charges. A Congressional investigation found that Rich, who raised millions of dollars for Democratic politicians, helped promote the pardon. She had $144 million in April 2006 in the trust in the Cook Islands plus a yacht called the Lady Joy, where Rich often entertained celebrities and raised money for charity.
Comment: Rich, who gave up her U.S. citizenship in 2011 and now maintains citizenship in Austria, did not reply to questions about her offshore trust
Azerbaijan
Name: President Ilham Aliyev and family Offshore Companies: Arbor Investments; LaBelleza Holdings; Harvard Management; Rosamund International
Three BVI entities set up in 2008 in the names of the president's daughters, Arzu and Leyla,. They list as a director wealthy local businessman, Hassan Gozal. His construction company has won major contracts in Azerbaijan. Another BVI entity set up in 2003, lists the president and his wife Mehriban as owners.
Comment: Those involved decline to comment
Spain
Name: Baroness Carmen Thyssen-Bornemisza Offshore Companies: Sargasso Trustees Ltd (1996-2004) and Nautilus Ltd (1994), both registered in the Cook Is. Her son, Borja, also has some of the shares
Former beauty queen, Spanish-based art collector and widow of a billionaire Thyssen steel heir, she used the offshore vehicles to buy art, including Van Gogh's "Watermill at Gennep" from Sotheby and Christies in London.
Her lawyer acknowledged that she gains tax benefits by holding ownership of her art offshore, but stressed that she primarily seeks "maximum flexibility" to move art from country to country
Comment: Her lawyer acknowledged tax benefits from owning art offshore, but stressed that she primarily seeks "maximum flexibility" to move art from country to country
Philippines
Name: Maria Imelda Marcos Manotoc Offshore company: Sintra Trust [BVI]
Late president Marcos' eldest daughter, now a provincial governor, is listed in 2005 in the BVI as the "investment advisor" and beneficiary of the Sintra Trust, set up by her associate, businessman Mark Chua of Singapore. She does not mention the trust in her Philippines declarations of financial interests
Comment: She declined to answer a series of questions from local journalists about the trust
• It is not suggested that any of those listed here have behaved unlawfully. Offshore entities can be held legitimately: the only aspect those listed below have in common is that they have used a jurisdiction which provides them with secrecy. This list is compiled from ICIJ data in the interests of accountability and transparency: any inaccuracies will be corrected promptly if brought to our attention.
Ukrainian billionaire Rinat Akhmetov used a BVI company to buy the most expensive flat sold in London, at One Hyde Park. Photograph: Sergei Supinsky/AFP/Getty
Britain's friendly regime of offshore secrecy has tempted an extraordinary array of post-Soviet billionaires to descend on London, sometimes to the sound of gunfire.
When Antonov bought a luxury yacht in Antibes, the Sea D, he was careful to register its ownership to an anonymous British Virgin Islands (BVI) entity, Danforth Ventures Inc.
He also found funds to try to take over the ailing Swedish car manufacturer Saab, though he did not take control. He did succeed for a while in owning the even more ailing Portsmouth football club.
Antonov is currently on bail in Britain. Lithuanian authorities are trying to extradite him for allegedly looting their collapsed bank Snoras, which he denies.
The allegation that oligarchs exploit Britain's offshore secrecy regime to shift assets out of their own countries is not an uncommon one. One refugee from the law is the Kazakh billionaire Mukhtar Ablyazov, who was allegedly last seen in February heading out of London on a coach to France. Ablyazov has been sentenced to 22 months in jail for contempt of court as the BTA Bank in Kazakhstan attempts to pursue his maze of offshore assets. The bank's lawyers claim Ablyazov has made off with £4bn using BVI and Seychelles companies, nominee directors and layers of front men. Ablyazov denies it.
These billionaires justify their use of British-controlled secrecy jurisdictions because they say they must protect themselves from corporate predators and political enemies in their home countries.
Another fleeing oligarch, the Georgian Badri Patarkatsishvili – a partner of fellow exile Boris Berezovsky– was found dead in 2008 in his Surrey mansion. Patarkatsishvili's business manager, Eugene Jaffe, managed £500m of the Georgian's assets from a central London office through a BVI company, Salford Capital Partners. Jaffe's company was owned in turn by an opaque BVI trust he set up called Montana River.
The wild-west financial landscape of post-Soviet Russia has attracted at least one entrepreneur from the British Isles to exploit the possibilities of the BVI secrecy regime. We have traced BVI entities used in Russia by the man once known as the richest in Ireland, the property developer Seán Quinn. He expanded into schemes for shopping malls in Moscow and Kiev.
He has now declared himself bankrupt and has received an Irish jail sentence for contempt, as the now state-owned Anglo Irish Bank seeks to recover what it says is a missing £2bn.
Other post-Soviet financiers have used Britain's secret offshore facilities for widely different purposes. The London-based Latvian oil trader Evgeny Tikhonov set up an entity in the BVI to hide a total of $2.4m (£1.5m) that his employer, Shell, subsequently convinced a British civil court he was wrongly skimming off from fuel deals. He was, however, acquitted of criminal charges over this.
The fund manager Igor Tsukanov, another arrival in the fashionable west London area of Notting Hill, kept funds in the BVI that will have apparently legally sheltered them from Russian taxes.
Dimitry Sergeev, a mobile phone games entrepreneur from Novosibirsk, whose firm was BVI-registered, faced a potentially costly dispute with a small Manchester supplier over some allegedly unpaid invoices. A source there said: "We decided it was too difficult to bring a legal action in the BVI." Sergeev did not comment.
Undoubtedly the most flamboyant post-Soviet beneficiary of Britain's offshore secrecy regime is Rinat Akhmetov, the richest man in the Ukraine. From a base in the coal-mining Donetsk region, he has personally acquired industrial assets estimated to be worth £11bn. He shifted £136m out of the former Soviet republic in 2007, in order to buy the most expensive flat sold in London, at One Hyde Park.
Asked why he hid behind a BVI company, his company spokesman in the Ukraine said it was "for internal structuring reasons". He added: "Water Property Holdings Limited fully paid all taxes and charges … as required by applicable laws in the UK. This includes payment in February 2011 of stamp duty land tax (SDLT) at a rate of 4% which amounted to £5.467m."
Legal use of BVI entities to disguise Russian movement of funds into British companies, also appears to be widespread. In one example we have unearthed, a British-registered firm, Pennard Chemicals Ltd, with an address at rental offices in Cannon St in the City of London, has had declared revenue over the last 3 years of more than 100 million euros, described as commission on unspecified Russian deals. Pennard Chemicals named director, The Hon Andrew Moray Stuart, with an address in Mauritius, is one of the sham nominees the Guardian/ICIJ research has identified. The shareholder, Imex Executive Ltd, is a BVI entity set up by a Moscow incorporation agency. In turn, its sham nominee directors include Jesse Hester in Mauritius and a sham nominee shareholder, Brenda Cocksedge. These nominees sell their names, without exercising genuine control or ownership. The real owner, according to company records we have seen, is named as Ivan Kovlachuk.
