PT’s new owner denies that a Panamanian offshore company was used for anything other than perfectly legal activities.
The Franco-Israeli Altice Group, which bought PT Portugal and Cabovisão, used the Panama registered company between 2008 and 2014, information thrown up by Sunday’s release of the Panama Papers covering offshore tax evasion and the concealment of assets.
References to Altice using an offshore company have led the company’s chairman, Patrick Drahi, to deny that the offshore company was used for tax evasion purposes.
Today’s Altice Group statement claims it used a company established in Panama "under perfectly legal conditions" and not to avoid taxes.
Altice "used a Panamanian company between November 2008 and December 2010 - a company in which neither Patrick Drahi nor the group directly or indirectly had any interest," noted the statement which failed to explain therefore why the company was necessary and what use it would have been if no one at Altice had anything to do with it.
Altice is at pains to note that it is an international group with 262 subsidiaries and holdings worldwide, some of which are based in the Netherlands, as Altice NV used for telecommunications assets, and others in Luxembourg.
The Panamanian company "was used in ancillary operations for reasons of strict confidentiality and was all perfectly legal, without any taxes due, there was no evasion, concealment or tax optimisation."
Patrick Drahi is of Franco-Israeli nationality and is tax resident in Switzerland.
The Panama Papers show that thousands of offshore companies have been created as tax havens for hundreds of people to manage their assets, including the king of Saudi Arabia, some close to the Russian President Vladimir Putin, the President of UEFA, Michel Platini, and the members of the Spanish Royal Family.
