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Not only Tony Blair and his wife Cherie, the king of Jordan and Ringo Starr have mailbox structures in tax havens with which they own real estate. Also several Belgians and residents of our country. Offshores also hide behind homes and buildings in Belgium.
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There can be various tax reasons for these constructions, for example because black money was once used for the purchase or to avoid inheritance taxes.
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In de Pandora Papers we find Bracount Holdings Limited, a PO box company in the British Virgin Islands, among others. He has another company in Curaçao as a shareholder, and owns real estate in our country. ‘Real estate in Belgium, interest out to UBO: 4 MIO EURO’, we read in the leaked documents. The ‘UBO’ or ‘ultimate beneficiary’ is a Dutchman who, through the construction, owns a multi-million dollar villa in Brasschaat, which he himself ‘rents’ from his PO box company.
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It is not an isolated case. An apartment in Kapellen also turns out to be owned by a PO box company in the British Virgin Islands, Table Mountain Trading, behind which the owner is hiding. Still other offshores in the Virgin Islands lead to an apartment in Uccle, owned by an Israeli owner, and to a villa in Uccle worth almost 2 million euros with Russian shareholders. The tax authorities have already identified 322 real estate in our country that are owned by 95 companies or other structures in tax-favorable places, such as the British Virgin Islands (59 real estate), Panama (117) and Monaco (40).
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Tv presenter
Some Belgians also use offshore real estate companies abroad, for example in London or Monaco. A Belgian TV presenter, Karen Minier, appears to have a construction in the Virgin Islands with her husband, the Scottish ex-Formula 1 pilot David Coulthard, for an apartment in Monaco, which the couple rents ‘for free’ from the offshore. The couple did not answer our questions.
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Another Belgian who owned his place in Monaco through shares in an offshore in the Virgin Islands is Frank Bamelis, known for the retirement home manager Senior Assist. According to the public prosecutor of West Flanders, a judicial investigation is underway against Bamelis. His lawyer Tom Bauwens confirms that Bamelis owned an apartment in Monaco through the offshore Amandine Inc., but it was founded by someone else, a Dutchman. When Bamelis and his wife bought the apartment in Monaco in 2009, they bought the shares of the offshore.
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Bamelis is said to have sold the offshore in 2019. He would also have used it ‘occasionally’ for ‘consultancy invoicing’, says his lawyer. ‘These invoices by Amandine on Belgian companies are subject to a thorough check by the Special Tax Inspectorate, partly prompted by a discussion about the applicable tax system between Monaco and Belgium. But Amandine had no connection with the retirement home activities in Belgium or elsewhere.’
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Pandora Papers
In the Pandora Papers, documents have been leaked from 14 offices that set up structures in tax havens. They open a Pandora’s box, containing more than 11.9 million files about mailbox companies in notorious tax havens. It concerns 2.94 terabytes of confidential data. The Panama Papers, which limited the disclosures to one law firm in Panama, sparked a torrent of financial scandals around the world five years ago.
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Together with the consortium of investigative journalists ICIJ and more than 600 journalists from 150 media around the world, De Tijd examined the documents of the Pandora Papers for months. It is the largest collaboration in journalistic history. With the help of Knack and Le Soir, we plowed through more than 33,700 files that referred to Belgium. We came 1,217 Belgians or residents of our country on the track, which had a total of 1,215 PO box companies and trusts established in tax havens.
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