Offshore cash helped fund Steve Bannon's attacks on Hillary Clinton [View all]
Source: The Guardian
Robert Mercer, whose spending assisted Donald Trumps election win, used tax haven of Bermuda to avoid US taxes
Jon Swaine
@jonswaine
Tuesday 7 November 2017 05.00 EST
Eighteen months before guiding Donald Trump to election victory, Steve Bannon delivered the opening shot in the ruthless Republican campaign to paint their Democratic opponent as corrupt.
The future White House chief strategist produced a book in May 2015 accusing Hillary Clinton of trading favours for donations to her charitable foundation. Its questionable central charge, on the sale of a uranium company to Russia, recently became the subject of a House inquiry and feverish talk on conservative media. But the financial arrangements of another foundation, which bankrolled Bannons creation of the book, Clinton Cash, have received less scrutiny.
Leaked documents and newly obtained public filings show how the billionaire Mercer family built a $60m war chest for conservative causes inside their family foundation by using an offshore investment vehicle to avoid US tax.
The offshore vehicle was part of a network of companies in the Atlantic tax haven of Bermuda led by Robert Mercer, the wealthy hedge-fund executive and Bannon patron whose spending helped put Trump in the White House and aided a resurgence of the Republican right.
Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/news/2017/nov/07/steve-bannon-bermuda-robert-mercer