[Archport] Esquemas de evasão fiscal financiam a caça ao tesouro

["Paulo Monteiro" <pmonteiro@ntasa.pt>]

Estarrecedor. E esclarecedor, simultaneamente.

 

Celebrities saved millions using tax breaks from shipwreck salvage

 

 

Alexi Mostrous Special Correspondent

The Times, October 8 2012

Celebrities and some of Britain’s most senior businessmen invested more than £110 million into marine treasure hunts, which allowed them to avoid tax on millions of pounds, The Times has learnt.

 

Bear Grylls, the TV adventurer and Chief Scout, David Harding, the City’s highest earner, and Stephen and Julie Pankhurst, the co-founders of website Friends Reunited, are among 129 people who invested in 18 shipwreck salvage companies offering tax breaks now under investigation by HM Revenue & Customs.

 

Mr Harding, who gives £50,000 a year to the Conservative Party, put in £4 million. When questioned by The Times last week, he said that he paid 39 per cent tax last year but confessed that in relation to tax planning he was “definitely not whiter than white”.

 

Marine salvage companies set up by the Robert Fraser Group, a private bank, chartered ships to search for chests of gold bullion, silver Phoenician bowls and 4th century BC jewellery. If treasure was found, investors would earn five times what they put in. If not, they were able to offset the cost against their own tax bills.

 

A complex loan arrangement allowed some investors to claim tax relief worth up to double the sum they put up in cash. An investor putting in £250,000 could borrow an additional £750,000 through a bank owned by Robert Fraser. If the search failed, the investor could claim tax relief on the full £1million. But rather than repaying the loan to the Robert Fraser bank, he was allowed to “assign” the debt to his wife, who could return it to him tax-free the next day.

 

Such individuals were able to generate tax relief worth £400,000 for a cost of £250,000, with the additional bonus that the searches might find valuable treasure.

 

Those involved maintain the operation was commercial and not simply set up as a means of gaining tax relief. But analysis of Robert Fraser’s marine companies shows that 11 out of 18 have declared total losses. A further four companies have lost millions but have not been formally wound up.

 

One single company has found treasure, according to Colin Emson, chairman of Robert Fraser, and recovered “a substantial amount of cargo.”

 

The high-risk did not prevent one hedge-fund tycoon, 32-year-old Anthony Clake, from investing £17 million into six Robert Fraser companies, according to Companies House data.

 

Paul Marshall, a colleague of Mr Clake’s at hedge-fund Marshall Wace and a prominent Liberal Democrat donor, invested £1.9 million.

 

Rupert Sebag-Montefiore, the chairman of Savills Residential UK, invested £299,000 and David Courtley, the former chief executive of Fujitsu, which earns billions of pounds supplying the Revenue with computer equipment, put in £1 million.

 

Mr Marshall and Mr Clake told The Times they had invested in several shipwreck salvage companies, including the Robert Fraser structure, and in total had found 11 wrecks, including a haul of silver. They strongly denied they had invested with Robert Fraser to gain tax relief and also said that they had not taken up the bank’s offer of a loan in some cases.

 

“We are glad to say the Treasury is benefitting threefold from these ventures,” they said. “From the statutory share paid to the Government; via the substantial taxes we pay, from the skilled employment that this sector is creating.”

 

Robert Fraser offered each investor the chance to borrow up to 75 per cent of their investment. Someone putting in £250,000 cash could borrow an additional £750,000, making a total investment of £1,000,000.

 

If the company went bust, as the majority did, the investor could use Government tax breaks to claim tax relief on the full £1 million.

 

When asked how he thought an ordinary taxpayer might regard such a scheme, Robert Fraser chairman Mr Emson said: “There’s a world out there of private jets and yachts. If the chap on PAYE says “I shouldn’t have a yacht’, we’ll be in the “scratch down the side of the car’ territory.

 

“I’m not saying life’s fair, but I wouldn’t chop the tall people down, or shave the heads of the nice blonde girls and make everyone fat and ugly.

 

“We put something together aimed at very high-net worth individuals . . . which pay the Government far more money than any relief that they’re going to give. I’m in constant touch with HMRC and they completely understand.”

 

He added: “These are emphatically not tax avoidance strategies. When wrecks are found and cargoes recovered, significant sums are paid to the Treasury.”

 

It is not known how many investors took out heavy loans. But one, who took out the full 75 percent loan, told The Times he had never repaid it. He claimed: “You took the package on the basis that the loan was either guaranteed or if it all went belly up it would be supported by a separate finance operation so you wouldn’t have to repay it.” When asked whether any investors had in fact paid back the debt, Mr Emson replied: “I don’t care”. The financier even explained that transferring the loan to a child could save on inheritance tax.

 

“If you were about to die you could assign it to your child and it would take a charge on your estate...Think of that.” Despite this, Mr Emson said investors retained an “absolute obligation” to repay their loans. He said Robert Fraser ran a commercial operation which was confident of providing a genuine return to investors.

 

“We are on the outer periphery of the tax world,” he said. “This mildly-sophisticated financial engineering is no more or less than anybody else is doing.”

 

Mr Harding, the founder of the world’s fifth-largest hedge fund and a philanthropist who has given £20 million to the Cavendish Laboratory in Cambridge, said he was aware that his investment would be “tax efficient” but maintained that advisors had told him it was not an “aggressive” tax avoidance scheme. He said he would not claim tax relief losses until the Revenue had given its approval to the arrangement.

 

 

 http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/money/tax/article3561447.ece

 

 

Revenue targets treasure hunters

Nicholas Hellen,  The Sunday Times, 30 September 2012

SCHEMES which allow rich people to lower their tax bills by financing marine treasure hunts are being examined by the taxman.

The founders of Friends Reunited and Paul Marshall, the hedge fund tycoon, are among those who have poured more than £100m into expeditions searching for shipwrecks. Some return empty-handed and investors offset the cost against their tax.

HM Revenue & Customs is now scrutinising how investors offset losses.

Colin Emson, managing director of the Robert Fraser Group, said his firm had financed treasure hunting projects for the past five years, backed by about £110m from more than 100 investors.

He said: “The Revenue . . . are getting the greatest co-operation from everybody. They want to know every aspect of it.”

Julie and Steve Pankhurst, a married couple who shared about £30m from selling the Friends Reunited website to ITV in 2005, have invested in three expeditions, according to documents filed at Companies House.

Marshall, a donor to the Liberal Democrats and whose wealth is estimated at £315m in The Sunday Times Rich List, is about to bring ashore seven tons of silver from a wreck in the Indian Ocean.

A spokesman said: “The Treasury is benefiting threefold from these ventures. Firstly, from the statutory share in the salvage paid to the government. Secondly, via the substantial taxes we pay on the profits. And thirdly, from the skilled employment that this growing high-tech maritime sector is creating.

http://www.thesundaytimes.co.uk/sto/news/uk_news/National/article1137118.ece

 

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Paulo Alexandre Monteiro

Instituto de Arqueologia e Paleociências (UNL)

Av. Berna 26C

1069-061 Lisboa

Portugal

almonteiro@fcsh.unl.pt

www.iap.fcsh.unl.pt

 

 

 

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