Under pressure to come clean, David Cameron has finally admitted that he profited from shares in a Panama-based offshore firm set up by his late father but sold his stake months before he became Britain’s Prime Minister in 2010.
The admission comes five days after the leak of millions of secret documents from a Panama-based law firm which revealed that the Prime Minister’s father, Ian Cameron, who passed away in 2010, ran an offshore firm under the name Blairmore Holdings.
After as many as four partial statements from Downing Street on the leak, Mr Cameron confessed in a television interview Thursday night that he did own shares in the Blairmore Investment Tru-st, which he sold for £31,500 before he became PM.
“I did own stocks and shares in the past, quite naturally because my father was a stockbroker,” he told ITV News. “I sold them all in 2010, because if I was going to become Prime Minister,” he said.
I didn’t want anyone to say you have other agendas, vested interests. Samantha (Mr Cameron’s wife) and I had a joint account. We owned 5,000 units in Blairmore Investment Trust, which we sold in January 2010. That was worth something like £30,000 pounds,” he said.
He added: “I have been very clear about the future. I have said I am not going to benefit from any family trusts. I have been very clear about the present, I don’t own any shares, I don’t own any unit trusts or any investments like that.
“My affairs are very transparent. I am happy to make them more transparent.”
The Panama papers revelations have already sparked political reaction in several countries, including India, where high-profile figures have been mentioned.
The papers detail how the law firm Mossack Fonseca helped its rich clients launder money, dodge sanctions and evade tax. The papers were passed to German newspaper “Suddeutsche Zeitung and shared by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) with 107 media organisations worldwide.
