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After being implicated in Paradise Papers, a trove of over 13 million leaked offshore files that first came out Sunday, Wilbur Ross, U.S. President Trump's commerce secretary and whose financial stake in a Russian shipping company with links to President Vladimir Putin's close allies has brought close scrutiny, has finally come out to defend his shadowy offshore business.
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"There is nothing wrong with it. The fact that it happens to be called a Russian company doesn’t mean there is any evil in it," Ross told the BBC on Monday.
The Paradise Papers shed light on secretive offshore tax havens, which are technically legal, but are used for the purposes of tax evasion by stashing and hiding large sums of money in offshore businesses or holdings.
Ross is known to have holdings in the Russian shipping company, Navigator, which has made millions from the Russian gas company Sibur. Kirill Shamalov, Putin's son-in-law, is one of the board members of the company.
Ross’s press secretary, James Rockas, said that the commerce secretary's holdings will not interfere with his government responsibilities.
"Secretary Ross recuses himself from any matters focused on transoceanic shipping vessels," he said.
Kirill Shamalov is also the son of Nikolai Shamalov, who is a long time friend of the Russian president. Shamalov has a 3.9 percent stake in the firm. Some of the other major shareholders in the company include Gennady Timchenko along with Leonid Mikhelson who have been targeted by U.S. sanctions.
Karen Dawisha, the director of Russian and post-Soviet studies at Miami University, Ohio, stated that one would assume Putin gained from the companies run by his family members and associates.
"Shamalov is a very important member of Putin’s circle and there is no question that he is closely trusted," Dawisha told the Guardian. "He was not well trained for the job at Sibur, but he was well connected."
Per the Navigator-Sibur deal, two ships were used to move the Sibur gas to Scandinavia and elsewhere in Europe from the Russian port of Ust-Luga located west of St Petersburg. But after Ross joined the Trump administration, the partnership flourished to four ships, doubling the number of ships, the Guardian reported.
Rokas has repeatedly tried to distance Ross from the Sibur deal that took place in February 2012.
"No funds managed by WL Ross & Co ever owned a majority of Navigator shares," Rokas said in a statement.
But, Navigator's August 2012 press release titled,"WL Ross Agrees To Acquire Majority Stake In Navigator" indicates otherwise.
According to the 2016 annual report of the firm, Ross affiliated entities had a 31.5 percent stake in the company but the value of Ross's personal holdings remain unclear.
UK Labor Minister, Jeremy Corbyn, has suggested that those implicated in the Paradise Papers and who "puts money into a tax haven to avoid paying tax should acknowledge the damage it does to society," BBC reported.
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Shaukat Aziz, the former prime minister of Pakistan )2004-2007), is one of the many new faces to surface as part of the 9-month long investigation that formed the Paradise papers. Some other Asian figures that have emerged as part of the investigation include India's serving Member of Parliament, Ravindra Kishore Sinha, Indonesia Opposition party leader, Prabowo Subianto, Indian tycoon, Vijay Mallya, and the Indian member of parliament, Sachin Pilot, implicated in the Rajasthan Ambulance scam along with a few other Indian leaders.
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