Pádraig on his Panama investment fund: "All monies I invested and received were tax compliant”
Padraig Harrington
Padraig Harrington insists his investment in an off-shore Panamian fund via his management company IMG was “tax compliant”.
The three-time Major winner’s name appeared in the leaked Mossack Fonseca files in relation to a Panamanian company called Marksmen Guaranteed Fund V SA.
Cossack acted as registered agent for the company, at the behest of its client, International Management Group (Overseas) Inc, with an address in Monaco.
The Irish Times today published the entire list of offshore companies, shareholders, and beneficial owners, contained in the Panama Papers and Harrington was one of the many well known Irish people to appear in the documents.
As the newspaper pointed out, “there is nothing illegal about using offshore companies and there is no suggestion intended that the people named here were involved in any illegality.”
In response to today's publication, Harrington issued a statement via his management company IMG that said: “My management company, IMG, set up the fund. All monies I invested and received from it were tax compliant.”
According to The Irish Times report: “The documents on the company include minutes of an annual general meeting held in Monaco in May 2000 and attended by Harrington by way of proxy, along with Welsh golfer Ian Woosnam, Swedish tennis player Thomas Enqvist, and South African golfer Retief Goosen. The meeting approved the annual accounts for 1998, and other matters.
“A copy of the 1999 accounts shows shareholders’ funds of $4 million at the end of that year, and lists shareholdings in such US public companies as Xerox, Abbott Laboratories, Intel and Bristol Myers Squibb.
"The accounts say that 245 shares in the company, costing $10,000 each, were issued in July 1998, and that the fund is to run for five years. Investments that cost $2.3 million when bought were valued at just double that at the end of the period.”
“The Panama Papers” are 11.5 million leaked documents that detail financial and attorney–client information for more than 214,488 offshore entities.
The leaked documents were created by Panamanian law firm and corporate service provider Mosack Fonseca and some dated back to the 1970s.
