A cavalcade of rich and famous, including golfer Tiger Woods, actors Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt, and soccer star Cristiano Ronaldo are listed as owners of registered businesses in a most out-of-the-way place: the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg. (THREAD)
— Miami Herald (@MiamiHerald) February 8, 2021
From Magic to Tiger to Brangelina: Why rich, famous stash assets in this speck of a country
BY BEN WIEDER
FEBRUARY 08, 2021 11:58 AM
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Johnson is one of a cavalcade of the rich and famous, including golfer Tiger Woods, actors Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt, and soccer star Cristiano Ronaldo, among them, listed as the owners of registered businesses in a most out-of-the-way place: the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg, a minuscule landlocked country in Western Europe.
It’s a way to minimize taxes and — until recently — maintain a high level of confidentiality.
Their names are now public thanks to a law that took effect in 2019 requiring Luxembourg companies to list their beneficial owners, those who have an actual financial stake in the company.
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The Miami Herald and its parent McClatchy partnered with 17 media outlets, including Le Monde in France, Süddeutsche Zeitung in Germany and the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project, as well as the nonpartisan Anti-Corruption Data Collective to analyze Luxembourg’s corporate registry, which contains more than 140,000 active companies, as part of a project called OpenLux. The registry cannot be searched by owner name, but is instead only searchable by company name, making it impossible to discover whether someone is a beneficial owner of a company in Luxembourg without knowing the name of the company in the first place. Le Monde scraped the data from the registry and shared it with partners last year.
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For movie stars Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt,...The Luxembourg company Quimicum held 72 million euros in assets at the end of 2018, worth roughly $83 million dollars at the time. Under Jolie’s and Pitt’s ownership, the value of Quimicum’s holdings increased dramatically, nearly doubling in value between 2012 and 2013, from 29 million euros at the end of 2012 to 56 million euros at the end of 2013. The value of its holdings has steadily increased since.
Roland Venturini, president of the wine brand, confirmed that the Luxembourg company is the holding company for the estate and vineyard and said that the company structure was established by the estate’s previous owner.
“The Miraval group meticulously complies with all applicable legal and fiscal rules,” he said in response to questions about the company’s structure.
He declined to discuss the growth in the value of the company’s assets, saying they “concern the private domain.”
It’s a way to minimize taxes and — until recently — maintain a high level of confidentiality.
Their names are now public thanks to a law that took effect in 2019 requiring Luxembourg companies to list their beneficial owners, those who have an actual financial stake in the company.
...
The Miami Herald and its parent McClatchy partnered with 17 media outlets, including Le Monde in France, Süddeutsche Zeitung in Germany and the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project, as well as the nonpartisan Anti-Corruption Data Collective to analyze Luxembourg’s corporate registry, which contains more than 140,000 active companies, as part of a project called OpenLux. The registry cannot be searched by owner name, but is instead only searchable by company name, making it impossible to discover whether someone is a beneficial owner of a company in Luxembourg without knowing the name of the company in the first place. Le Monde scraped the data from the registry and shared it with partners last year.
...
For movie stars Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt,...The Luxembourg company Quimicum held 72 million euros in assets at the end of 2018, worth roughly $83 million dollars at the time. Under Jolie’s and Pitt’s ownership, the value of Quimicum’s holdings increased dramatically, nearly doubling in value between 2012 and 2013, from 29 million euros at the end of 2012 to 56 million euros at the end of 2013. The value of its holdings has steadily increased since.
Roland Venturini, president of the wine brand, confirmed that the Luxembourg company is the holding company for the estate and vineyard and said that the company structure was established by the estate’s previous owner.
“The Miraval group meticulously complies with all applicable legal and fiscal rules,” he said in response to questions about the company’s structure.
He declined to discuss the growth in the value of the company’s assets, saying they “concern the private domain.”
