Paradise Papers help to raise pressure on tax havens

BERLIN: Germany welcomes the revelations in leaked offshore investment documents as an important contribution to creating transparency and fighting tax avoidance at an international level, a government spokesman said on Monday.

"For the German government, I’d like to say that this publication and the work done by media is welcome because it sheds light on the structure, actors and beneficiaries of parallel tax worlds," spokesman Steffen Seibert said.

"They support what is important for us, namely the transparency process at the international level, and they create pressure on those countries that block this process," he added.

A Finance Ministry spokesman said it would be helpful to German tax authorities if the documents, dubbed Paradise Papers, were made available to them.

An Interior Ministry spokesman said the police should be able to see them too.

The data was obtained by Germany’s Sueddeutsche Zeitung newspaper and shared with the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) and some media outlets. Reuters has not independently verified the documents.