Tycoons Bruce Gyngell and Edward Lumley set up offshore tax empires
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Version 0 of 1. The families of two Australian tycoons figure prominently in a leaked list of clients belonging to the offshore “wealth management” firm Kleinwort Benson, the Guardian can reveal. They are the families of the late media boss Bruce Gyngell, and of the late insurance tycoon, Edward Lumley. In the four years before his death in 2000, Gyngell set up tax-free Jersey trusts for his wife Kathy and his children David, Skye, Adam and Briony according to the files leaked to the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) news non-profit in Washington DC and seen by the Guardian in London. One of Margaret Thatcher's favourite businessmen in London and the founder of TV-AM there, he would nevertheless have avoided British tax on his capital, as a “non-domiciled” Australian. Gyngell's son David, listed as one of the multi-million-pound beneficiaries, heads Channel Nine in Sydney. He most recently made headlines earlier this year for brawling with James Packer on Bondi Beach. Bruce's widow, Kathy, remains in London and is politically active. She works for the rightist Centre for Policy Studies. She told the Guardian: "I am choosing not to comment." Lumley deposited at least £100m in Jersey trusts before his death. The cash benefits some 40 living Lumleys and their aristocratic Hemphill and St Aubyn relatives, many residing in the UK. Henry Lumley, in Bagshot, Surrey, told the Guardian: “My grandfather was a successful Australian businessman who … set up discretionary trusts for his assets and his successors in 1940. These trusts ... comply with UK law and returns are made to HMRC [Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs] in accordance with treaties set up between the two countries. If beneficiaries receive income from the trusts they have and always will return them in their annual tax returns in the normal way and are subject to UK tax.” Documents seen by the Guardian that reveal past and present offshore clients of wealth managers Kleinwort Benson are being published simultaneously in the US by the non-profit news organisation ICIJ. They reveal a variety of legal offshoring activities which we invited business magnates to explain. Those named with offshore links include the Rothermere family, owners of the Daily Mail in London; supermarket magnate Sir Ken Morrison; the Laura Ashley family; Sir Stelios Haji-Ioannou, the founder of easyJet; the inventor Sir James Dyson, the Malaysian tycoon Khoo Kay Peng; and the software executive Martin Read. |