From IOM Today

A Belgian news website has reported that authorities in the country are investigating the possibility the island was used to evade tax.

The investigation stems from a hack of the Cayman National Bank which has a base in the island.

The Brussels Times has reported that news organisations Le Soir, De Tijd and Knack, whose reporters are members of an international group of investigative journalists which had previously worked on the Panama Papers, were given access to the 2.26 terabytes of documents which was stolen from CNB.

A joint study by the Organised Crime Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP) and the Distributed Denial of Secrets collection (DDS) has been analysing the data since it was released online.

Most of the information was innocent data and included discussions about plans to attend the Belgian Grand Prix.

However, the writer of the piece, Alan Hope, described some of the data as providing ’concrete references to cases of apparent tax evasion linked to Belgian individuals’.

According to journalist Kristof Clerix, writing in Knack, no links have been found to public figures or officials and as such they have not published any names found in the documents.

Alan Hope’s piece added: ’One such case concerns payment orders totalling half a million euros from an Isle of Man company to the Belgian bank account of a Dutch scientist, described as loans or consultancy fees.

’In another case, the account of a Belgian resident received payments of 200,000 euros in total from another Isle of Man company, with vague mentions such as “payment as agreed”.

’At the current stage of the investigation, such dealings cannot be assumed to be illegal, but they are enough to arouse the interest of the special investigations unit of the Belgian Ministry of Finance, which is home to the tax authorities.’

A separate piece on the Brussels Times website, by Sarah Johansson, said that the data had been ’secured’ by the Belgian internet service centre and the country’s tax inspection department.

Her article added: ’The tax department said a dozen Belgian and Dutch residents have already been identified.

’The media group’s analysis revealed a dozen residents are on the Isle of Man bank’s listings [CNB], but at this stage it is not possible to judge the legality of illegality of their activities and transactions.’

For more on this story go to; http://www.iomtoday.co.im/article.cfm?id=53105&headline=Belgian%20website%20claims%20the%20island%20is%20used%20to%20dodge%20tax&sectionIs=news&searchyear=2020