A “impertinência” das fortunas chinesas
Editorial/Público
A recente notícia de que o regime de Pequim ia combater a
corrida dos chineses ao luxo, deslumbrados pelo dinheiro fácil e pela corrupção
mais ou menos subterrânea, esbarra agora numa revelação demolidora: familiares
de dirigentes chineses, incluindo do actual Presidente, Xi Jinping, terão
grandes fortunas guardadas nas ilhas Virgens britânicas. A revelação foi feita
pelo Consórcio Internacional de Jornalistas de Investigação e baseia-se em 2,5
milhões de documentos sobre cerca de 22 mil clientes de offshores com moradas
na China continental e em Hong Kong. A isto, que diz o regime? “Do ponto de
vista do leitor, este artigo não é pertinente”, disse o portavoz. É natural. Na
China, por força da elite comunista que gere o capitalismo nacional, só é
pertinente o que o regime autoriza. Ou seja: que as fortunas floresçam em
segredo e que não se fale delas. De resto, hão-de continuar as punições — mas à
margem da intocável clique dirigente.
Elite política da China oculta milhões em paraísos
fiscais
ANA GOMES FERREIRA
22/01/2014 – in Público
Na China há uma “nobreza de ouro” que enriqueceu graças aos
cargos políticos que ocupou e à corrupção. Familiares de pelo menos cinco
dirigentes comunistas (actuais ou passados e entre eles do Presidente Xi
Jinping) foram esta quarta-feira acusados de terem reunido grandes fortunas e
de terem ocultado parte delas em contas offshore, nas Ilhas Virgem britânicas.
As revelações estão contidas nos dados obtidos pelo
Consórcio Internacional de Jornalistas de Investigação, que juntou 2,5 milhões
de documentos sobre cerca de 22 mil clientes de offshores com moradas na China
continental e em Hong Kong e 16 mil em Taiwan. Desse grupo, há pelo menos 13
famílias de líderes chineses.
“A China tornou-se no maior mercado para os paraísos
fiscais”, diz o relatório do Consórcio, que passou as suas conclusões e muitos
dados a um grupo de jornais que esta quarta-feira fizeram manchete com a
notícia — El País, Le Monde, The Guardian, Süddeutsche Zeitung e o japonês
Asahi Shimbun. “Todos os sectores da economia chinesa, do petróleo à energia
renovável, da mineração ao comércio de armas, surgem na documentação”.
Quarta-feira é dia de conferência de imprensa no Ministério
dos Negócios Estrangeiros em Pequim e os jornalistas questionaram o porta-voz,
Qin Gang, que desvalorizou a notícia: “Do ponto de vista do leitor este artigo
não é pertinente. O que nos faz questionar se não terá outros motivos”. Sobre a
presença do nome de Xi Jinping nos documentos, Qin disse que o Presidente “é
inocente”. Se não fosse, se houvesse qualquer ilegalidade no seu comportamento,
explicou o porta-voz, isso já teria sido descoberto.
As contas em paraísos fiscais não preconizam um crime por si
só. E fontes do Governo chinês ouvidas pelo El País — depois de um contacto oficial
sem resposta — explicam isso mesmo, que não há ilegalidade e que não se tratam
de empresas ou contas dos líderes, mas de familiares seus. Mas o relatório diz
que há provas que permitem concluir que “muitos chineses e empresas usaram
entidades offshore para se envolverem em comportamentos ilícitos ou ilegais”.
A guerra de Xi
Estes dados surgem num momento crucial do debate em curso na
China sobre o combate à corrupção no aparelho comunista e o regresso à ética.
Xi Jinping apresentou-se como o grande paladino dessa guerra e as revelações de
que a sua família acumulou uma grande fortuna enquanto foi vice-presidente
(2008-13) mancham a sua reputação e levantam dúvidas sobre o tratamento igual
que prometeu para os infractores.
Compromete também a credibilidade da sua grande proposta
social — a construção de uma nova China com mais igualdade e ancorada numa
classe média sólida. Uma parcela significativa dos chineses saiu na última
década da pobreza, mas a China tornou-se no mesmo período de tempo num dos
países com maior desigualdade do mundo. “Através da evasão fiscal os ricos
estão a ficar cada vez mais ricos e a classe média, a classe trabalhadora, é
que sofre os efeitos”, disse Clark Gascoigne, do Think Tank Global Financial Integrity.
Em dez anos, o número de multimilionários chineses passou de
zero para 315 e destes 135 são membros da Assembleia Nacional — 20 membros
desta assembleia tinham, em 2012, um património avaliado em 62.200 milhões de
dólares, 46 vezes mais do que os 20 congressistas americanos mais ricos,
segundo um centro de informação de Washington citado pelo El País.
Para agravar o embaraço de Xi Jinping, as revelações
coincidem com o início do julgamento, em Pequim, de Xu Zhiyong, o fundador do
Movimento dos Novos Cidadãos, grupo que denunciava precisamente crimes de
corrupção e esquemas de enriquecimento dentro do aparelho do partido único
chinês. Xu foi acusado de “incitamento à perturbação da ordem pública” e pode
ser condenado a uma pena de prisão.
Investigações anteriores do jornal The New York Times e da
Bloomberg já tinham começado a desvendar a teia de ligações de familiares de Xi
Jinping e Wen Jiabao (antigo primeiro-ministro) a empresas com negócios
obscuros e milionários em paraísos fiscais. Num texto chamado “O parente de
ouro”, o El País explica que o cunhado de Xi, Deng Jiagui, se tornou um magnata
do imobiliário em Hong Kong. Se a principal empresa do cunhado registada nas
Ilhas Virgens britânicas foi criada quando Xi ainda era vice-presidente, a de
imobiliário apareceu nas vésperas de Xi Jinping ser nomeado Presidente, em
Março do ano passado.
Um fenómeno em crescimento
Analistas ouvidos pelo diário independente de Hong Kong
South China Morning Post tentaram explicar o fenómeno das offshores do ponto de
vista económico. Dali Yang, da Universidade de Chicago (EUA), disse que a fuga
do capital que foi parar às mãos das famílias politicamente influentes se pode
dever ao receio de que a economia não seja sustentável e que possa haver uma
erosão (desvalorização) dos bens. “A guerra contra a corrupção que está em
curso na China também pode ter acelerado este fenómeno”, disse Dali.
Do ponto de vista dos negócios, explicam outros, o offshore
apareceu como recurso para pagar menos impostos na China: as empresas com sede
no estrangeiro são vistas pela China como estrangeiras e, por isso, beneficiam
de grandes benefícios fiscais. A mulher mais rica da China, Yang Huiyan, o
homem mais rico do mundo, Pony Ma Huateng, e o empresário do ramo imobiliário
Zhang Xin têm todos registos em paraísos fiscais. Assim como Li Xiaolin (filha
de Li Peng, o primeiro-ministro da repressão em Tiananmen), que é conhecida por
"Rainha da Energia" e é uma das empresárias mais influentes no mundo;
Wu Jianchang (neto de Deng Xiaoping, o Presidente que encerrou o capítulo da
planificação da economia e começou a caminhar para o sistema de mercado); e os
Wang (os três filhos do general Wang Zhen, vice-presidente entre 1988 e 1993).
Não se sabe quem passou os documentos que revelam como são
ricas as famílias dos homens mais importantes do aparelho comunista chinês. O
site do Consórcio de Jornalistas ficou esta quarta-feira inacessível na China,
assim como as edições online dos jornais que divulgaram o trabalho de
investigação.
 |
Guardian US Interactive Team
|
The ICIJ Offshore Leaks Database cracks open the
impenetrable world of offshore tax havens. Users can through more than 100,000
secret companies, trusts and funds created in offshore locales such as the
British Virgin Islands, Cayman Islands, Cook Islands and Singapore.
China's princelings storing riches in Caribbean
offshore haven
Relatives of political
leaders including China's current president and former premier named in trove
of leaked documents from the British Virgin Islands
By James Ball and Guardian US Interactive Team / http://www.theguardian.com/world/ng-interactive/2014/jan/21/china-british-virgin-islands-wealth-offshore-havens
More than a dozen family members of China's top political
and military leaders are making use of offshore companies based in the British
Virgin Islands, leaked financial documents reveal.
The brother-in-law of China's current president, Xi Jinping,
as well as the son and son-in-law of former premier Wen Jiabao are among the
political relations making use of the offshore havens, financial records show.
The Hong Kong office of Credit Suisse, for example,
established the BVI company Trend Gold Consultants for Wen Yunsong, the son of
Wen Jiabao, during his father's premiership — while PwC and UBS performed
similar services for hundreds of other wealthy Chinese individuals.
The disclosure of China's use of secretive financial
structures is the latest revelation from "Offshore Secrets", a
two-year reporting effort led by the International Consortium of Investigative
Journalists (ICIJ), which obtained more than 200 gigabytes of leaked financial
data from two companies in the British Virgin Islands, and shared the
information with the Guardian and other international news outlets.
In all, the ICIJ data reveals more than 21,000 clients from
mainland China and Hong Kong have made use of offshore havens in the Caribbean,
adding to mounting scrutiny of the wealth and power amassed by family members
of the country's inner circle.
As neither Chinese officials nor their families are required
to issue public financial disclosures, citizens in the country and abroad have
been left largely in the dark about the elite's use of offshore structures
which can facilitate the avoidance of tax, or moving of money overseas. Between
$1tn and $4tn in untraced assets have left China since 2000, according to
estimates.
China's inequality problem
Income inequality is a mounting issue in China, a
consequence of the country's rapid growth. A Beijing university study suggests
that income at the richest 5th percentile are 34 times higher than those of the
bottom 5th percentile.
China's rapid economic growth is leading to a degree of
internal tension within the nation, as the proceeds of the country's newfound
prosperity are not evenly divided: the country's 100 richest men are
collectively worth over $300bn, while an estimated 300m people in the country
still live on less than $2 a day. The Chinese government has made efforts to
crack down citizens' movements aimed at promoting transparency or
accountability among the country's elite.
The confidential records obtained by the ICIJ relate to the
incorporation and ownership of offshore companies, which is legal, and give
little if any information as to what activities the businesses were used for
once established. Offshore companies can be an important tool for legitimate
Chinese businesses, especially when operating overseas, due to restrictions and
legislation in the country.
One Chinese political family whose financial affairs have
not escaped scrutiny — at least in the west — is that of the former premier,
Wen Jiabao. In November, the New York Times reported that a consultancy firm
operated by Wen's daughter, who often goes by the name Lily Chang, had been
paid $1.8m by the US financial services giant JPMorgan.
The payment has become one of the targets of a probe by US
authorities into the activities of JPMorgan in China, including an examination
of the firm's hiring practices, which are alleged to have included the
deliberate targeting of relatives of influential officials.
However, the ICIJ files reveal the role of the BVI's
offshore secrecy in obscuring Chang's links with her consulting firm, Fullmark
Consultants. The company was set up in the BVI by Chang's husband, Liu
Chunhang, in 2004, and he remained as sole director and shareholder until 2006,
when he took a job in China's banking regulation agency.
Nominal ownership of the firm was transferred at that time
to Zhang Yuhong, a Wen family friend, who the New York Times reported had
connections with the Wen family's business interests.
The company established for Chang's brother Wen Yunsong,
with the aid of Credit Suisse, was dissolved in 2008, with little hint as to
its purpose or activities in the two years it was operational. One purpose for
such companies is to allow for the establishment of bank accounts in the
company's name, a legal measure that nonetheless makes tracing of assets a more
complicated task.
No members of the Wen family, nor Zhang, responded to any of
multiple approaches for comment, made over a period of several weeks by ICIJ
reporters.
However, in a recent letter dated December 27th apparently
sent to a Hong Kong columnist amid public anti-corruption probes into other
former officials, Wen Jiabao is reported to have denied any wrongdoing during
his premiership, or in how his family obtained their reported wealth.
"I have never been involved and would not get involved
in one single deal of abusing my power for personal gain because no such gains
whatsoever could shake my convictions," he is reported to have written.
A spokesman for Credit Suisse refused to comment on any
specific case or client, but said the bank had "detailed procedures for
dealing with politically exposed persons" which complies with money
laundering regulations in Switzerland and elsewhere.
"Credit Suisse is required by Swiss law to uphold bank
client confidentiality and is therefore unable to comment on this matter,"
he said. "In the absence of any further information, the media cannot be
certain that they have a full understanding of the matter. As a result, they
will not be able to portray it accurately or objectively."
The ICIJ records also detail a company connected to Deng
Jiagui, the husband of the older sister of Xi Jinping, China's president, who
has cultivated a public image as an anti-corruption campaigner. According to
the BVI records, Deng, a real-estate developer and investor, owns a 50% stake
in the BVI-incorporated Excellence Effort Property Development. Ownership of
the remainder of the company traces back to two Chinese property tycoons, who
last year won a $2bn real estate bid.
Other "princelings" — a widely-used term for the
families of China's political elite — with offshore ties include: Li Xiaolin, a
senior executive in one of China's state-owned power firms and the daughter of
former premier Li Peng; Wu Jianchang, the son-in-law of China's late
"paramount leader" Deng Xiaoping; and Hu Yishi, a cousin of former
president Hu Jintao.
China's political elite were not the only individuals taking
advantage of the BVI's offshore anonymity. At least 16 of China's richest
people, with a combined estimated net worth in excess of $45bn, were found to
have connections with companies based in the jurisdiction.
Among those was Huang Guangyu, the founder of China's
largest electronics retailer and once the country's richest man. Huang and his
wife had a network of more than 30 companies in the BVI, according to the ICIJ
records. Huang subsequently fell from grace and was in 2010 sentenced to 14
years in prison for insider trading and bribery.
Despite his imprisonment, Huang's offshore network is not
standing idle. In 2011, one of his BVI firms made an unsuccessful bid for the
Ark Royal, the retired aircraft carrier which was once the flagship of the
British navy. According to press reports, Huang planned to turn the carrier
into a shopping mall, but navy officials decided instead to scrap the ship.
In total, the ICIJ database — which covers just two of the
BVI's numerous incorporation agencies — lists more than 21,000 addresses in
China or Hong Kong as directors or shareholders of offshore companies,
demonstrating the country's status as one of the premier buyers of offshore
services. In recent years, offshore jurisdictions have aggressively courted the
Chinese market, with many opening offices and promotional sites in Hong Kong.
The BVI's courtship of China's rich and powerful may prove
an embarrassment for the United Kingdom. The BVI remains a British overseas
territory, and while largely independent in practice, UK authorities retain a
degree of responsibility and connection with the islands.
The UK's Prime Minister David Cameron has publicly pledged
to take action against offshore secrecy and offshore tax avoidance, including
in crown protectorates such as Jersey and Guernsey, and overseas territory,
meaning further exposure of the role of the BVI could prove a political
embarrassment.
The role of major Western financial institutions in
establishing offshore structures has also attracted scrutiny, despite being a
routine and entirely legal function for many of them.
The ICIJ records show both PricewaterhouseCoopers and UBS
had extensive contacts with incorporation agents in the BVI and other
territories in the region. In total, UBS helped incorporate more than 1,000
offshore institutions for clients from China, Hong Kong or Taiwan, while PwC
had a role in establishing at least 400.
Both PricewaterhouseCoopers and UBS declined to comment on
any specifics regarding their activities in the BVI, or with China's rich.
However, spokesmen for both companies said their activities complied with
appropriate law and ethical codes.
"As a matter of policy, PwC member firms do not comment
about clients or their business," said a spokesman for PwC China.
"PwC's tax advisory practice helps our clients make
informed business decisions, balance their responsibilities to do the right
thing for multiple stakeholders, often across many countries, and meet their
tax requirements."
A UBS spokesman said: "We operate to the highest
standards in our business operations to meet all our legal and regulatory
requirements."
The amassed wealth and alleged corruption among China's
political elite has been a topic of growing interest not only in the Western
media, but also — to a limited extent — within China itself.
Spurred on by President Xi's public statements around
anti-corruption efforts, a Chinese academic and activist, Xu Zhiyong, inspired
a "New Citizens' Movement" in the country — an informal civil society
group which among other goals aims to increase the financial transparency of
the country's elite and curbing corruption.
The movement, however, has faced strong opposition from
Chinese authorities. Numerous participants in the New Citizens Movement have
been arrested at public gatherings, while its founder Xu is in prison facing
charged of "gathering a crowd to disrupt public order", and faces up
to five years in prison. Meanwhile, international journalists who have reported
from within the country on the wealth of China's political elite have faced
immigration difficulties from the government, or trouble with authorities.
JANUARY 22, 2014, 1:14 AM
Comment
Report Details Overseas Accounts of Chinese Elite
By THE NEW YORK TIMES / http://sinosphere.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/01/22/report-details-overseas-accounts-of-chinese-elite/?ref=world
Chinese elites have set up extensive offshore companies that
allow them to conceal funds abroad, according to a new report from the
International Consortium of Investigative Journalists. The report, which is
based on leaked documents covering thousands of tax haven clients, lists more
than a dozen of China’s wealthiest people as well as relatives of top
officials, including the Chinese leader Xi Jinping, and descendants of
Communist Party “red nobility.”
Mr. Xi has made cracking down on corruption and reining in
officials’ displays of wealth among his top priorities since taking charge of
China’s ruling Communist Party in 2012. The ICIJ report further exposes the
financial success enjoyed by some family members of Chinese leaders and argues
that the combination of wealth and power is a liability for the government at a
time when the Chinese public is increasingly concerned about official
privilege.
Minxin Pei, an expert on Chinese politics at Claremont
McKenna College, told the ICIJ that while such overseas wealth is not necessarily
illegal, it is often tied to “conflict of interest and covert use of government
power.” The report notes that such overseas companies can have legitimate
business purposes and that their development was encouraged by foreign
investors in China.
The report was released hours before the start of a trial
for Xu Zhiyong, a legal scholar accused of “assembling a crowd to disrupt order
in a public place.” He is one of several other activists who have called for
public disclosure of officials’ assets. At least eight of them are going on
trial this week in what is widely seen as an effort to shut down their
independent anticorruption campaign, known as the New Citizens Movement.
Among the names listed in the leaked documents is Deng
Jiagui, the husband of Mr. Xi’s older sister and a wealthy businessman. Records
show that Mr. Deng is a half owner of a British Virgin Islands company,
Excellence Effort Property Development, according to ICIJ. The other half is
“owned by yet another BVI company belonging to Li Wa and Li Xiaoping, property
tycoons who made news in July by winning a $2 billion bid to purchase
commercial real estate in Shenzhen,” ICIJ reported.
The report said:
PricewaterhouseCoopers, UBS and other Western banks and
accounting firms play a key role as middlemen in helping Chinese clients set up
trusts and companies in the British Virgin Islands, Samoa and other offshore
centers usually associated with hidden wealth, the records show. For instance,
Swiss financial giant Credit Suisse helped [former Prime Minister] Wen Jiabao’s
son create his BVI company while his father was leading the country.
The files come from two offshore firms — Singapore-based
Portcullis TrustNet and BVI-based Commonwealth Trust Limited — that help
clients create offshore companies, trusts and bank accounts. They are part of a
cache of 2.5 million leaked files that ICIJ has sifted through with help from
more than 50 reporting partners in Europe, North America, Asia and other
regions.
The ICIJ is a project of the Washington-based Center for
Public Integrity, which links journalists across the globe on investigative
reporting projects. Working with media organizations including The New York
Times, it has published reports based on the leaked documents that identified a
range of prominent figures who have benefited from overseas accounts. Those
include a former budget minister in France, a daughter of the former Philippine
dictator Ferdinand Marcos and Azerbaijan’s ruling family.
Files on China, Hong Kong and Taiwan formed the biggest
portion of the collection of 2.5 million leaked documents, ICIJ said, and a
reporting team spent six months looking through those files. A mainland Chinese
news organization that originally participated in the reporting was forced to
withdraw from the project after government warnings, the ICIJ said. It did not
name the news organization “to protect journalists from government
retaliation.”
In a sign of the sensitivity with which such reporting is
handled in China, the Guardian newspaper said its website was partially blocked
in China on Wednesday after it ran a report based on leaked tax haven documents
shared by the ICIJ. And the ICIJ said on Twitter that its website is now
blocked “in many parts of China.”
The ICIJ said that more than 37,000 names from China, Hong
Kong and Taiwan are included in a database of tax haven documents and that they
would be published online Thursday
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