Australia[edit]
On April 22, 2016, Australia said it would create a public register showing the beneficial, or actual, owners of shell companies, as part of an effort to stamp out tax avoidance by multinational corporations.
[176]
The
Australian Taxation Office has announced that it is investigating 800 individual Australian taxpayers on the Mossack Fonseca list of clients and that some of the cases may be referred to the country's Serious Financial Crime Task Force.
[177] Eighty names match to an organized crime intelligence database.
[178]
Leaked documents examined by the
ABC "pierced the veil of anonymous shell companies" and linked a Sydney businessman and a Brisbane geologist to mining deals in North Korea.
[179] "Rather than applying sanctions, the Australian Government and the
ASX seem to have allowed a coach and horses to be ridden through them by the people involved in forming this relationship, corporate relationship with one of the primary arms manufacturers in North Korea," said Thomas Clark of the
University of Technology Sydney.
[179]
David Sutton was director of AAT Corporation and EHG Corporation when they held mineral licenses in North Korea and did business with Korean Natural Resources Development and Investment Corporation, which is under
United Nations sanctions, and North Korea's "primary arms dealer and main exporter of goods and equipment related to ballistic missiles and conventional weapons, responsible for approximately half of the arms exported by North Korea."
[179] The geologist, Louis Schurmann, said British billionaire
Kevin Leech was key to putting the deal together.
[179] Leaked documents also reveal the involvement of another Briton, Gibraltar-based John Lister.
[179] According to ABC, the
Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade was aware of these mining deals, which had also been brought up in the
Australian Senate, but nobody ever referred the matter to the
Australian Federal Police.
[179]
On May 12, 2016, the names of former
Prime Minister of Australia Malcolm Turnbull, and former
Premier of New South Wales Neville Wran, were both found in the Panama Papers, due to the pair's former directorship of the Mossack Fonseca-incorporated company
Star Technology Systems Limited. Turnbull and Wran resigned from these positions in 1995, and the Prime Minister has denied any impropriety, stating "had [Star Technology] made any profits—which it did not regrettably—it certainly would have paid
tax in Australia."
[18
here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panama_Papers