Jan STROZYK, NDR (DE), Investigative journalist member of the Paradise Papers team, Kristof CLERIX, Knack magazine (Belgium), Investigative journalist member of the Paradise Papers team, Simon BOWERS, The Guardian (UK), Investigative journalist member of the Paradise Papers team, Jeppe KOFOD (S&D, DK) and Pierre MOSCOVICI, Member of the EC in charge of Economic and Financial Affairs, Taxation and Customs, express themselves on the Paradise Papers during a public hearing in the EP in Brussels.

Brussels

KOFOD, Jeppe (S&D, DK)

fight against tax fraud and evasion (T)

public hearing

MOSCOVICI, Pierre (PSE, FR, EC)

The Paradise Papers - What are they about and why are they relevant: extracts from the public hearing

SOUNDBITE (English), Jan STROZYK (-, DE), NDR, Investigative journalist member of the Paradise Papers team, We see a kind of normalisation of the use of shadow companies in business dealings, so what people are going to say in the future is that if even Mr SCHROEDER is ok with using shadow companies in thee British Virgin Islands, why should I not do it?

SOUNDBITE (English), Jan STROZYK (DE), NDR, Investigative journalist member of the Paradise Papers team, What we found in the data is that the same mecahnisms that work to evade or avoid taxes, can also be used to avoid the gambling regulations.

SOUNDBITE (English), Kristof CLERIX, Knack magazine, Belgium, Investigative journalist member of the Paradise Papers team, Here we have the Belgian state itself, involved in secrecy jurisdictions, which is in a way ironic, because the Belgian government says that it is fighting the abuse of these kind of structures. And interesting is when I contacted the colleagues, you know to put together this overview, and the sent the best stories of their countries,we noticed that not only the Belgian state but also several other EU Member States are active themselves in off-shore structures.

SOUNDBITE (English), Simon BOWERS, The Guardian, UK, Investigative journalist member of the Paradise Papers team, If you remember ASI, Apple Sales International, that is one of the companies that took Jersey tax residency. It is an Irish company (referring to slide showed at 01'14) so I put the Jersey flag there and the Irish flag there to indicate that it is still an Irish company but it is Jersey tax resident. What we think happened is it sells its profit-generating intangible property into a fellow Apple subsidiary tax resident in Ireland, we think that could be for over 200 billion dollars, and the tax consequence is just at the bottom of that slide, so as the huge sales proceeds arrive in Jersey, there's a zero tax rate there, so no taxable income. But there's a huge tax expense in Ireland. There's a particularly generous IP acquisition regime in Ireland, that means that Apple therefore enjoys many many years of tax write-offs after this acquisition has taken place.

SOUNDBITE (English), Simon BOWERS, The Guardian, UK, Investigative journalist member of the Paradise Papers team, It looks pretty certain that next year, will find that Apple's off-shore tax reserves, which are already at over 250 billion dollars, will have doubled since Apple's 2014-2015 restructuring.

SOUNDBITE (English), Jeppe KOFOD (S&amp;D, DK), So what do you see now, do you see that there's a big gap between you know, the letter of the law of each jurisdiction, and how it is applied by multinational corporations?

SOUNDBITE (English), Jan STROZYK (DE), NDR, Investigative journalist member of the Paradise Papers team, The mechanisms and the law firms that are providing them and the banks that are helping them to reduce your tax bill or go treaty shopping in way that fits your tax planning, but you could also do it for other kinds of regulation. This is not only true for the gambling industry, this is probably even more true as I said before for the shipping industry, they do it for years. I am from Hamburg and there is literally no ship with a German flag anymore.

SOUNDBITE (French), Pierre MOSCOVICI, Member of the EC in charge of Economic and Financial Affairs, Taxation and Customs, So this agressive tax planning I think is even more shocking because a lot of what they do is legal. So I think the solution is easy. We can't accept they way things are at the moment, if the allows this then we should change the law.