© Drew Angerer/Getty ImagesAppleby, the offshore law firm at the heart of the Paradise Papers, was criticised for bringing legal action against the Guardian and the BBC
Revelations from the Paradise Papers and Panama Papers investigations into offshore finance were cited extensively during a second reading of the sanctions and anti-money laundering bill, which will replace elements of European legislation after the UK leaves the EU.
The government, however, signaled that it would not force British territories to adopt new transparency measures, despite previous calls by David Cameron for countries around the world to unite in tackling corruption.
Several MPs demanded that British territories - former colonies, some of which have become major tax havens - be forced to publish registers of the beneficial, or true, owners of offshore companies.
The UK introduced its own public register of beneficial company owners in 2016, and has promised to introduce a similar measure for UK property. British crown dependencies and overseas territories, however, are only required to provide information on the true owners of offshore companies to law enforcement, and only if requested.
"Registers must be open - to civil society, the media, journalists, non-governmental organizations - if all the relevant dots are to be joined up, as the release of the Paradise Papers so clearly shows," said Andrew Mitchell, a Conservative MP and former secretary of state for international development. "With the best will in the world, the regulatory authorities are not in that business, and narrow questions from regulatory authorities simply do not suffice."
Mitchell said World Bank data showed that more money was stolen from Africa through unpaid taxes or concealment each year than the continent received in overseas aid or foreign investment. "We owe it to the poor of Africa, as well as to our own taxpayers, to take the action we can to bring about an end to this scandal," he said.
Dame Margaret Hodge, the former chair of parliament's public accounts committee, said the "constant flow of scandals is strong evidence that the system based on the private automatic exchange of information is not working".
She cited the cases of Dan Gertler, an Israeli diamond billionaire who was put under US sanctions last year, and Jean-Claude Bastos, the manager of Angola's sovereign wealth fund who was revealed to have invested its money in several ventures of which he was the beneficial owner. Both men, who deny any wrongdoing, appeared in the Paradise Papers.
Hodge also described a report in the Guardian that offshore companies in the British Virgin Islands and Anguilla had allegedly been used to circumvent US sanctions against North Korea as disturbing.
The shadow foreign minister Helen Goodman said the investigations had exposed the inadequacy of a system whereby beneficial ownership data was only accessible to regulators.
The foreign minister Alan Duncan, however, said the government would only pressure the territories to adopt new transparency measures when they became a global standard, and insisted that an EU commitment to introduce public registers did not meet that threshold.
Criticism was directed at Appleby, the offshore law firm at the heart of the Paradise Papers, for bringing legal action against the Guardian and the BBC over their reporting.
The shadow Treasury minister Anneliese Dodds criticized the government for failing to "defend publicly the journalists who were singled out by Appleby" and asked it to affirm that the reports were in the public interest.
Appleby has said a hacker had stolen its files and argued that none of the journalistic disclosures were in the public interest. It has demanded damages and asked the court to permanently ban both media organizations from using its leaked files to investigate its conduct or that of its clients.
Earlier this month the European parliament announced an inquiry into financial crime, tax evasion and tax avoidance, including measures to circumvent VAT on private jets facilitated by Appleby.
David Pegg is a reporter at the Guardian. He previously worked at The Bureau of Investigative Journalism and for Channel 4 Dispatches. You can follow him on Twitter @davidtpegg and his PGP key is available here.
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