//“Stemcor is a family company and I have always fully declared my shareholdings. I have never held an executive or non-executive role and therefore have not had any role in the company.
“As a shareholder I have on a number of occasions sought and received assurances from the executive that the company always paid the appropriate tax.
“All I could do as a shareholder in a company not run by me, and over which I had no influence or control, was to ensure that any shares I held were above board and that I paid all relevant taxes in full. Every time I received any benefit from the company this happened.”
Liechtenstein was one of the most secretive tax havens until a tax evasion scandal following the theft of bank data and under intense pressure from its neighbours, it renounced bank secrecy. In 2008 it negotiated a deal with the UK, under which it would close the accounts of bank customers who did not come clean, in return for the introduction of a partial amnesty for individuals who wanted to put their affairs in order.
Jason Collins, tax partner at Pinsent Masons, international law firm said the fact the shares in Stemcor were brought onshore using the LDF suggested the structure that held them was not tax-compliant. “You would only use the LDF if you had a historic tax problem.”
He said he had “a fair amount of sympathy” for Ms Hodge’s position but said she should have used the example to bolster her attack on avoidance. “She could have said ‘my family has regularised complex positions and others should do the same’.”
Filings at Companies House show that until 2011, the Link Steel Foundation, based in Liechtenstein, owned nearly 480,000 shares in Stemcor, about 6.3 per cent of the total. At the end of 2011 the company had net assets of £273m.
But the company, one of the world’s largest steel traders, hit problems after falling steel prices damaged the profitability of the low-margin business. It restructured its $1.3bn debt in March 2014 after defaulting on a $850m loan the previous year. Accounts for the year to December 2013, the most recent available, showed net liabilities of £72.6m.
Stemcor was originally set up in 1951 as a joint venture between a German company and Mr Oppenheimer. He had four daughters including Ms Hodge and a son, Ralph Oppenheimer, and died in 1985. //
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