The move is the latest request for the former chancellor to explain details of how he has managed his family’s fortune, which is said to total £730m and has seen him routinely referred to as the UK’s richest MP. The vast majority of the Conservative leadership candidate’s wealth comes from his marriage to Akshata Murty, a member of the family that founded Indian technology group Infosys, in which he owns a stake worth around £690m. However, Sunak also worked in the hedge fund industry between 2006 and 2013, raising questions about whether loans he personally made to his UK business came from profits made in international tax havens. James Murray, the shadow Chancellor of the Exchequer, said: “Rishi Sunak wants to be our next Prime Minister, but he still can’t seem to give a straight answer to questions about his relationship with tax havens. It’s hard to avoid the impression that he has something to hide.” Between 2013 and 2014, Sunak lent £652,449 to Catamaran Ventures UK, a company he jointly owned with Murty at the time, according to documents filed at Companies House. The loans were made shortly after Sunak worked in America between 2010 and 2013 for the US branch of hedge fund Theleme Partners, where he managed three entities based in the US tax haven of Delaware. Sunak was entitled to a share of the profits made by one of the Delaware entities, according to the US filings, and industry sources said he may also have invested his own money in the hedge fund. “Rishi has never used or benefited from a tax haven,” Sunak’s spokesman said, adding that all of Theleme’s U.S. profits are subject to “full U.S. tax” and that “all profits within the management company group Theleme are taxed in either the UK or the US as the case may be.’ However, the spokesman declined invitations to say whether Sunak had made the loans to the UK company from an overseas bank account – or whether the loans had been made from an overseas corporate account, which could potentially have saved Sunak tax on the transfer the money to the UK. Days before becoming an MP in 2015, Sunak transferred his stake in the British company and the loan to his wife, a transaction that would have been largely tax-free. There is no evidence that Sunak has broken any tax laws and he insisted he “has always been a completely normal UK taxpayer”. However, the former chancellor is occasionally embarrassed by his links to those with less conventional tax arrangements. Subscribe to the Business Today daily email or follow Guardian Business on Twitter @BusinessDesk In April, Sunak and his family were criticized for potentially avoiding £20m in tax through Murty’s ‘non-resident’ status. After days of negative coverage, she agreed to pay UK tax on her worldwide earnings going forward and for the last tax year, but remains a non-resident citizen. Murty was also revealed to be a shareholder in a restaurant business that channeled investments through a company in the tax haven of Mauritius – a structure that could allow its supporters to avoid taxes in India. The largest single shareholder of this business – International Market Management (IMM) – is Hugh Sloane, the co-founder of hedge fund Sloane Robinson, which was found to have operated a tax avoidance scheme by a court in 2012. Sunak’s boss at Theleme, Patrick Degorce, was forced to pay millions of pounds in tax in 2013 following a ruling over a personal investment in a complex film financing scheme that sought to protect nearly £19 million in profits.
