China’s power elite linked to offshore tax havens: Investigative journalists group

Relatives of China's president and other business and political leaders are said to be linked to offshore tax havens that helped "shroud the communist elite's wealth," says a US-based journalist group.

The report by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists comes t a time when President Xi Jinping had made fighting corruption a theme of his leadership.

Complaints that relatives of China's leaders abuse their positions to profit from real estate and other deals are plenty, but details on their activities, especially those at the highest party levels, are often hidden.

According to the Washington-based ICIJ, it obtained documents showing the identities of nearly 22,000 owners of companies and trusts in the British Virgin Islands, Samoa and other offshore centres, which included Xi's brother-in-law, former premier Wen Jiabao's son and son-in-law and relatives of other ruling party figures.

The group said close relatives of China's top leaders held secretive offshore companies in tax havens that helped shroud the wealth of the communist elite.

Chinese authorities were quick to block public access to today's report. Access to the ICIJ website was blocked, along with foreign news reports about it. A reporter who posted an internet link to the report on the popular Sina Weibo microblog service received a message from the company saying other users were blocked from seeing the link.

Meanwhile, ICIJ has obtained 2.5 million files that reveal the use of secretive entities in the Cook Islands or British Virgin Islands by a cross-section of China's most powerful political, military and business elite.

Among those who figure in the elite are China's most powerful men and women – including at least 15 of China's richest, members of the National People's Congress and executives from state-owned companies now embroiled in corruption scandals.

Though ownership of secret offshore accounts does not however necessarily imply illegal conduct, the secretive nature of such offshore accounts makes auditing difficult and could potentially help mask the true extent of the party elite's wealth, according to the consortium.

The latest leaks follow embarrassing revelations by investigative reports published by the New York Times and Bloomberg in 2012 which bared the family riches of Xi and former premier Wen Jiabao.

Xi has aggressively pushed a policy of fighting graft within the party since assuming power, in a bid to help the party maintain credibility in a country where rampant corruption and a wide gulf in wealth equality are increasingly inflaming public opinion.