Millions of internal records have leaked from the UK’s offshore financial industry, a report claims.

Millions of internal records have leaked from the UK’s offshore financial industry, the Guardian newspaper said, exposing the identities of people such as national leaders, businessmen and a millionaire accused of hiding assets from his ex-wife.

Some 2 million emails and other documents have been leaked, mainly from the British Virgin Islands, the newspaper said.

International financial centres, including offshore locations, have signed dozens of tax disclosure and other related agreements in recent years in a bid to make their financial affairs more open. However, some campaigners claim that some offshore centres remain secretive and a haven for illicit and undeclared funds; others claim that jurisdictions in some cases conflate legitimate privacy with questionable secrecy. In their defence, organisations such as the CATO Institute, a think tank based in Washington DC, have argued that the constant assault on tax havens is an attempt by debt-laden, often high-spending governments to create a global tax cartel by punishing tax competition. The crackdown on international financial centres has also raised questions about how far governments are prepared to bend the rules of due process of law. Germany, for example, has paid for information stolen from private banks in Switzerland and Liechtenstein in recent years.

Political accounts

The newspaper report said that in France, Jean-Jacques Augier, President François Hollande's campaign co-treasurer and close friend, has been forced to publicly identify his Chinese business partner, it said. In Mongolia, the country's former finance minister and deputy speaker of its parliament says he may have to resign from politics as a result of this investigation.

The two men can be named for the first time, the publication said, because they used companies in financial centres, particularly in the British Virgin Islands.

The newspaper said the names have been unearthed in a project by the Washington-based International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, in collaboration with the newspaper and other international media outlets, which are to publish the findings this week.

The report said BVI's clients include Scot Young, a millionaire associate of deceased oligarch Boris Berezovsky. Dundee-born Young is in jail for contempt of court for concealing assets from his ex-wife.

Young's lawyer, to whom he signed over power of attorney, appears to control interests in a BVI company that owns a potentially lucrative Moscow development with a value estimated at $100 million. Another is jailed fraudster Achilleas Kallakis. He used fake BVI companies to obtain a record-breaking £750 million in property loans, the report said.

As well as Britons hiding wealth offshore, a list of government officials and rich families across the world are identified, from Canada, the US, India, Pakistan, Indonesia, Iran, China, Thailand and former communist states, the report added.

Editor's note: While the Guardian's story looks impressive at first sight - which is why this publication has noted it - it should be added that there is a grave danger - as highlighted by some other commentators - that as well as dubious characters having their financial affairs exposed, it will also reveal the private financial affairs of people who have not broken any laws, either in their home countries, or anywhere else. The Guardian's story is unclear - we may have more details to come - in how the journalists on this story acquired the details. It would be good if those reporters involved disclosed how they got this information.