Image source, Getty Images

A Lithuanian shopping mall partly owned by U2 star Bono is under investigation for potential tax evasion, following a probe prompted by the Paradise Papers.

The mall allegedly avoided paying 47,000 euros (£41,500) in local taxes using an unlawful accounting technique.

The company running the mall, in the city of Utena, denies any wrongdoing.

The leaked documents show that Bono owned a stake in a Maltese holding company that bought the mall, via a Lithuanian holding company, in 2007.

In a statement, the Irish entertainer and anti-poverty campaigner, also known as Paul David Hewson, said he had been "assured by those running the company that it is fully tax compliant".

Read the full story here.

The Formula 1 champion avoided tax when he imported his £16.5m private jet, according to Paradise Papers documents. This video explains the jet leasing structure that the documents suggest enabled the VAT refund.

Investigative journalist Richard Brooks spoke to the BBC about Apple’s tax status questionnaire (see previous post) and the Isle of Man’s response to it.

Apple says it remains the world's largest taxpayer, paying about $35bn (£26bn) in corporation tax over the past three years, that it had followed the law and its changes "did not reduce our tax payments in any country".

In order to keep its tax rates low, Apple needed to find an offshore financial centre that would serve as the tax residency for its Irish subsidiaries.

In March 2014, the company's legal advisers sent a questionnaire to Appleby, the leading offshore finance law firm and source of much of the Paradise Papers leak.

It asked what benefits different offshore jurisdictions - the British Virgin Islands, Bermuda, the Cayman Islands, Mauritius, the Isle of Man, Jersey and Guernsey - could offer Apple.

The document asked key questions - set out in the extract above. Leaked emails also make it clear that Apple wanted to keep the move secret.

One email sent between senior partners at Appleby says: "For those of you who are not aware, Apple [officials] are extremely sensitive concerning publicity. They also expect the work that is being done for them only to be discussed amongst personnel who need to know."

Read more here.

Image source, PA

Formula 1 champion Lewis Hamilton avoided tax on his £16.5m luxury jet, according to Paradise Papers documents.

They show a £3.3m VAT refund was given after the Bombardier Challenger 605 was imported into the Isle of Man in 2013.

It appears a leasing deal set up by advisers was artificial and did not comply with an EU and UK ban on refunds for private use - although he may have been entitled to one for business.

Hamilton's lawyers say a tax barrister review found the structure was lawful.

They added it was not correct to say no VAT had been paid on any of the arrangements.

Read our full story here: Lewis Hamilton 'dodged' VAT on £16.5m private jet

Image source, Reuters

The world's most profitable firm has a secretive new structure that would enable it to continue avoiding billions in taxes, the papers show.

They reveal how Apple sidestepped a 2013 crackdown on its controversial Irish tax practices by actively shopping around for a tax haven.

It then moved the firm holding most of its huge untaxed offshore cash reserve to the Channel Island of Jersey.

Apple said the new structure had not lowered its taxes.

It said it remained the world's largest taxpayer, paying about $35bn (£26bn) in corporation tax over the past three years, that it had followed the law and its changes "did not reduce our tax payments in any country".

Read our full story here: Apple's secret tax bolthole revealed

Image source, Getty Images

Responding to the revelations in the Paradise Papers, former Democrat presidential candidate Bernie Sanders warned of a shift towards an "international oligarchy".

Speaking to the Guardian, external, Mr Sanders said: "The major issue of our time is the rapid movement toward international oligarchy in which a handful of billionaires own and control a significant part of the global economy.

"The Paradise Papers shows how these billionaires and multinational corporations get richer by hiding their wealth and profits and avoid paying their fair share of taxes."

The BBC's Economics Editor Kamal Ahmed explains the UK's relationship with some of the most popular hubs for processing offshore investments.

Such places argue they are good for growth - for companies and individuals - by ensuring they aren't taxed multiple times. But they've also been criticised for being too secret, too weak on regulation, and too open to corruption.

Radio 4 PM

James Quarmby, a tax specialist at the international law firm Stephenson Harwood, has defended the use of offshore investments, saying that many of them aren't used for tax evasion.

"Everyone is interested in what the rich and the famous do, and they like to put two and two together and get 10. That's exactly what's happening here," he tells BBC Radio 4's PM programme.

The UK government has been "extremely successful" at cracking down on tax evasion, he says. The deficit between expected tax revenues and those collected by HMRC is the "lowest it's ever been" at £36bn, according to Quarmby. He says:

The vast majority of which HMRC tell us is from domestic tax evasion. The percentage probably attributable to offshore is £6bn, which is a drop in the bucket.

There are issues to be addressed, but let's not taint everyone with that brush. The vast majority of people that have offshore bank accounts do so because they have offshore assets and they're trading.

Image source, Alamy

A small amount of the Queen's offshore funds were invested in BrightHouse, a rent-to-own retailer which has been accused of irresponsible lending. It sells electrical goods and furniture predominantly to people on lower incomes via weekly installments.

Last month, it was ordered to repay nearly £15m to customers by the Financial Conduct Authority, which said it had not acted as a "responsible lender" for some of its customers.

A parliamentary report in 2015, external said the company was charging interest rates of up to 94%. One in five customers were in arrears and one in 10 purchases ended in repossession, according to the report. In one case examined by MPs and Lords, a Samsung freezer cost less than £650 to buy in John Lewis but £1,716 under a five-year plan from the chain.

The company maintains it is a responsible lender and through its 300 stores provides a service to millions of Britons who are unable to access traditional lines of credit. BrightHouse told the Guardian newspaper it follows all relevant tax regulations and pays its tax in full and on time.

Private Eye writer Richard Brooks, who was once a tax inspector, spoke to the BBC about public figures investing in legal tax avoidance schemes. Asked if celebrities such as the actors from Mrs Brown's Boys would know what they were involved in, he said:

"I'm sure they don't know exactly, but I think they know in principle.

"They know they are being invited to put - in the case of Mrs Brown's Boys actors for example - they are being invited to have their fees put into offshore structures and returned in a clever way that lets them avoid tax.

"You don't need to know the exact legalistic details to know you're getting into something the taxman might want to take a look at."

He went on to say that it would be unwise for celebrities to continue using such schemes.

"I think the public mood has turned against this, it's not a good career move to put your money offshore."

He said it was unlikely that the Queen was aware that some of her private funds had been invested offshore.

"I'm sure the Queen wasn't aware, I suspect even her close advisers weren't. The decision would have been taken by a financial advisor many many steps removed from the Queen herself."

Image source, Private Eye

To put this trove of documents into perspective - it's second only in size to last year's Panama Papers.

BBC journalists who worked on the story over the past few months say that the scale of the information and how it lifts the lid on sophisticated, upper-end offshore dealings, is unprecedented.

Wikileaks founder Julian Assange has praised the Paradise Papers leak, from his quarters at the Ecuadorian embassy - but he suggested that the files hadn't been published widely enough.

Wikileaks published a big tranche of US diplomatic cables in 2010, but the scale of that leak - 1.7 gigabytes - is dwarfed by the Paradise Papers' 1.4 terabytes (1.4 trillion bytes, compared to 1.7 billion bytes).

Nearly 100 media groups from around the world have investigated the papers released yesterday, all co-ordinated by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists.

House of Commons
Parliament

Financial secretary to the Treasury Mel Stride has just finished taking questions from MPs in the House of Commons.

Shadow chancellor John McDonnell - who opened the debate with an urgent question - said Mr Stride representing the government, rather than Chancellor Philip Hammond, was "unacceptable".

Mr McDonnell called the revelations the "biggest tax scandal of this generation" and said there would have to be a "critically overriding" reason for the chancellor's no-show.

House of Commons
Parliament

Image source, HoC

Green co-leader Caroline Lucas says the leak shows the "industrial scale" of tax avoidance, and the British overseas' territories prominence in this is "shaming".

She calls on ministers to drop its opposition to an EU blacklist of tax havens.

The Minister Mel Stride replies that talks on the blacklist are ongoing and the government has "done nothing to attempt to block them".

The Paradise Papers are the fifth major leak of financial papers in the past four years.

Last year saw the Panama Papers - from the Panamanian law firm Mossack Fonseca - which also exposed offshore investments of rich and powerful individuals.

Speaking to the Public Accounts Committee today, HMRC officials told MPs that the tax agency was pursuing 66 criminal investigations off the back of that leak.

BBC News Channel

Anthony Travers, the chairman of the Cayman Islands Stock Exchange, tells the BBC there is "complete transparency" in regards to the British Overseas Territories and the Crown Dependencies.

He says allegations of secrecy are untrue.

They have "pro-active reporting of financial transactions in every account in the Overseas Territories," he says.

"So, the suggestion that any of this is based on secrecy, or in some way to use the perjurious term 'tax-haven related', is simply a mischaracterisation of the position".

You can follow more live updates from the debate in the House of Commons and the Public Accounts Committee on the BBC's Parliament live coverage here.

House of Commons
Parliament

Back in the House of Commons, Tory MP Nigel Mills says the Paradise Papers leak should be "a spur" to the government to produce an anti-corruption strategy and a list of properties owed by overseas companies.

Mr Mills adds that the anti-corruption strategy was promised last year but then "got lost when the then-champion [former cabinet minister Sir Eric Pickles] stood down at the last election".

By coincidence, senior HMRC officials are facing MPs at the Public Accounts Committee this afternoon to discuss the tax agency's performance last year.

The session starts, unsurprisingly, with questions about how much HMRC knew about the Paradise Papers leak.

Jon Thompson, chief executive of HMRC (pictured), said the agency did not have access to the papers - despite requesting it two weeks ago.

Question: from what they've seen so far, is there anything HMRC wasn't aware of?

"Potentially in one case," Mr Thompson says. "I may need to be very careful because I can't obviously get into which case," he says.

The second episode of BBC Panorama airing this evening may lead to further cases, he adds.