Pandora Papers: Jimmy Iturri, the Bolivian journalist listed as a beneficiary of an offshore

Fufurufu Inc. is the name of an offshore company created in the British Virgin Islands of which the well-known Bolivian journalist Jaime ‘Jimmy’ Iturri, close to the circle of Evo Morales, appears as a secondary beneficiary. His father Jaime Iturri Salinas was the one who opened the offshore company with his wife.

If not for the journalistic alliance largest in history that was woven around the leak of more than 11.9 million files that the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) received, this offshore deal, as well as those that made more than 330 politicians and public officials in 91 countries and territories of the world, would continue to be part of the secrets that tax havens keep.

In this way, the Pandora Papers Bolivia team found that Jimmy Iturri, along with two of his brothers, is a secondary beneficiary of Fufurufu Inc.The analysis of documents reveals that the journalist’s parents in 2011 hired a Trident Trust, a global offshore service provider, to set up this portfolio company with which they created a trust for their children.

Jimmy Iturri, with a vast experience in the world of Bolivian journalism, in the last decade has served as director and majority shareholder of the television network ATB. It is a channel aligned with the speech of the Government of the Movement Toward Socialism (MAS), Evo Morales’ party. First it was the journalist who – in a personal capacity – responded to the inquiries that the Pandora Papers Bolivia team made about Fufurufu Inc. and pointed out that with this offshore neither he nor his family violated Bolivian laws or those of another country.

Later, his father argued that he created offshore to “safeguard the savings” of him and his wife to be support for their old age and inheritance for their children.

An offshore to manage a “family inheritance”

Fufurufu Inc. was registered as “job” number 11090240 in the client portfolio of Trident Trust, a global provider of offshore services. “I did not have, nor do I have, nor will I have any bank account in any of the Virgin Islands. Fufurufu Inc. was an enterprise of my parents established to administer the inheritance towards their children, which disappeared a few years ago ”, the journalist Iturri explained about this offshore business.

Bolivian law establishes that forced heirs or children have the right to receive most of the assets of their ancestors. The tax burden for direct heirs (children) is 3% for the Transaction Tax and between 10 and 20% for the Tax on Inheritance and Free Transmissions of assets, where the calculation basis will be the tax assessment of the asset property, as explained by the Bolivian regulations. But, in addition, it indicates that all inheritance must be notified to the corresponding authorities.

According to the data obtained, Iturri Salinas opened the offshore in the Virgin Islands in 2011.

Just around those years he was facing a process against the National Tax Service, which had notified him of the debt of a fine for not presenting his purchase books, this is how it reads in a resolution of the Tax Challenge Authority, of April 8, 2013.

The notifications of sanction that Jaime Iturri Salinas received – which he later challenged and succeeded in Tax Authority rules in your favor– were issued a year after he and his wife knocked on the doors of global offshore provider Trident Trust to create Fufurufu Inc., in the British Virgin Islands. When he was consulted in this regard, he denied that this litigation had led him to establish his shell company.

Regarding this offshore, in an email dated September 7, 2011, exchanged by the officials of the Trident Trust law firm with those of UBS Financial Services Inc, several attachments were found, among them: the incorporation form, the letter of instructions, identity documents, meeting minutes and share certificate.

From the analysis of this data, it is known that Fufurufu Inc. was established at the beginning of September 2011, in order to manage “its own bank account and its own investment portfolio”.

The company was created with 50,000 shares. Each share had a face value of one dollar and were registered in the name of Park International Limited, as read in the certificate of issuance of shares.

In a Declaration of Trust, Park International Limited undertakes to “account for all dividends and benefits” that Fufurufu Inc. generates in favor of the secondary beneficiaries, in the event of the death of the main directors, Julio Jaime Iturri Salinas and his wife.

Iturri Salinas who until 2011 -according to the supporting documents that he sent to Trident- already had 51 years of practicing law and 35 years as legal advisor to the Compañía Eléctrica de Bolivia (COBEE), which provides electricity to the city of La Paz ( Bolivia), decided to put three of his children, one of them Jaime Reynaldo – known in Bolivia as’ Jimmy Iturri’-, as his secondary beneficiaries.

The two men were assigned 33.33% of the shares, respectively. While the daughter woman, 33.34%.

Of the three children who appear as secondary beneficiaries of Fufurufu Inc., Jimmy is the most visible face of the Iturri Salmón family, not only because of his profession as a journalist and ‘media man’, as he has begun to be called in the last decade since he was in charge of ATB television, but because of his closeness to the circle of trust of former president Evo Morales.

Jimmy Iturri was sent an extensive questionnaire of questions, but his response was general: that his parents assumed ownership of the offshore and established that, if one of them died, the other would inherit everything. “And in the event of both recently passing away, my brothers and I, as heirs, would be holders.

Fortunately, my parents are still alive, so I was never an owner, much less made any transaction through Fufurufu Inc ”.

He said that the constitution of this shell company did not violate any Bolivian norm or that of another country. “The purpose of inheritance to which it refers, obviously, was not fulfilled since said company was dissolved several years ago,” he said without specifying the closing date.

When the journalist’s father, who is already around 87 years old, was asked why he chose a tax haven to manage his family assets and inheritance of his children, he replied: “Bolivia and several Latin American countries suffer serious problems of political instability. recurrently, the lack of institutions and corruption are commonplace. We created the trust with the aim of safeguarding our life savings so that they are a backup for our old age and inheritance from our children ”.

He explained that Fufurufu Inc. remained active “for about 4 years” and that it decided to close it because it concluded that “it was not a good vehicle to preserve the heritage.”

Having offshore companies is not illegal, as long as they are declared and the owners comply with their obligations to the treasury of their countries. For an expert in tax law, who investigates the legitimation of illicit profits from a Bolivian state entity and who asked to keep his name in reserve, “it is easy for offshore owners to point out that the companies had no movements or that their transactions were legal. ”.

If they do not report on what the corporate purpose of these companies is, where they carried out their operations, why they were incorporated in a tax haven, if they had profits and if they were correctly declared in the country of origin of the owners. So this activity becomes illegal.

Iturri Salinas said that in 2011, when he went to the Virgin Islands, Bolivian legislation did not require declaring this extraterritorial activity and insisted that his heritage “has been framed in compliance with the law.”

“They can say a lot in their defense because Bolivia will not be able to access the financial statements in the accounts of those tax havens, not as long as there are no international treaties,” concluded the expert.

The diversion of profits by companies and the concealment of great fortunes generate millionaire holes in the public income of the States. According to a report by the UN Economic Commission, in 2018 around 325,000 million dollars in taxes were evaded in Latin America. This represents more than 6.1% of the region’s gross domestic product.

In the Pandora Papers there are around three hundred Bolivians who created 130 offshoresmainly in the British Virgin Islands and Panama.

Those who went there are businessmen from different sectors, family groups and former public officials.

The Pandora Papers are the largest journalistic collaboration in history. More than 600 journalists from 150 media and almost 120 countries have participated in the investigation of the almost 12 million documents obtained from 14 firms that are dedicated to the creation of offshore companies. Trident Trust – attended by the Iturri Salmón family – is one of them.

In this project, coordinated by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, the Pandora Papers Bolivia Team participated, as well as international media such as The Washington Post, The Guardian, the Süddeutsche Zeitung and CONNECTAS. (I)