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		</div><p>David Cameron said he did not have &#8220;anything to hide&#8221; about his financial affairs as he revealed that he and his wife sold shares worth more than £30,000 in an offshore tax haven fund set up by his late father.</p>
<p>The Prime Minister has faced intense pressure to detail his interests since the Panama Papers leaks included details of Blairmore Holdings &#8211; which used &#8220;bearer shares&#8221; to protect investors&#8217; privacy.</p>
<p>In an interview with ITV News, he insisted that it was a &#8220;fundamental misconception&#8221; that it was set up to avoid tax, saying his father was being &#8220;unfairly written about&#8221;.</p>
<p>And he said that while his and Samantha&#8217;s profit from the scheme was &#8220;subject to all the UK taxes in the normal ways&#8221; &#8211; it came to just below the threshold at which capital gains tax would have applied.</p>
<p>Mr Cameron, who has been a prominent campaigner for increased tax transparency, also repeated his willingness to publish his own tax returns.</p>
<p>Number 10 said Mr and Mrs Cameron bought their holding in April 1997 for £12,497 and sold it in January 2010 for £31,500.</p>
<p>The annual personal allowance for an individual in 2009-10 was £10,100 &#8211; meaning jointly the profit was just outside the threshold.</p>
<p>Downing Street had initially said it was a private matter before first clarifying that the PM had no offshore funds and trusts and then making clear the family would not benefit in future either.</p>
<p>&#8220;I paid income tax on the dividends, but there was a profit on it but it was less than the capital gains tax allowance, so I didn&#8217;t pay capital gains tax, but it was subject to all the UK taxes in all the normal ways,&#8221; Mr Cameron told ITV.</p>
<p>&#8220;So I want to be as clear as I can about the past, about the present, about the future, because frankly, I don&#8217;t have anything to hide.</p>
<p>&#8220;I&#8217;m proud of my dad and what he did and the business he established and all the rest of it.</p>
<p>&#8220;I can&#8217;t bear to see his name being dragged through the mud, as you can see, and for my own, I chose to take a different path from my father, grandfather and great-grandfather, who were all stockbrokers, and I&#8217;ve got nothing to hide in my arrangements and I&#8217;m very happy to answer questions about it.&#8221;</p>
<p>Mr Cameron said it had been &#8220;a difficult few days&#8221; since the mass leak of records from Panamanian law firm Mossack Fonseca as he launched a staunch defence of his father.</p>
<p>&#8220;I think a lot of the criticisms are based on a fundamental misconception, which is that Blairmore Investment, a unit trust, was set up with the idea of avoiding tax.</p>
<p>&#8220;It wasn&#8217;t. It was set up after exchange controls went, so that people who wanted to invest in dollar-denominated shares and companies could do so, and there are many other, thousands of other unit trusts set up in this way.</p>
<p>&#8220;It was reported to the HMRC, the Inland Revenue. It reported itself every year. It was properly audited.</p>
<p>&#8220;It wasn&#8217;t a family trust. It wasn&#8217;t for the benefit of one particular family; anyone could have bought units in it. And crucially, if you were a UK citizen and bought units in it, then you paid income tax on the dividends, and you paid capital gains tax when you sold the shares.</p>
<p>&#8220;So you&#8217;re subject to full UK taxation.</p>
<p>&#8220;So that&#8217;s what it was. There are many other unit trusts like it, and I think it&#8217;s being unfairly described, and my father&#8217;s name is being unfairly written about.</p>
<p>&#8220;But look, I&#8217;m very clear about my situation. I&#8217;m happy to answer questions about it. And above all, I&#8217;m going to go on fighting very hard to make sure we have greater transparency, greater rules on tax avoidance, and aggressive tax evasion and aggressive tax avoidance. It&#8217;s very important that we do.</p>
<p>&#8220;Now, I&#8217;ve been very clear about the future. I&#8217;ve said I&#8217;m not going to benefit from any family trusts. I&#8217;ve been very clear about the present: I don&#8217;t own any shares, I don&#8217;t own any unit trusts or any investments like that. I own two homes, one of which I rent out, and I have a salary as Prime Minister. So my affairs are very transparent. Happy to make them more transparent.</p>
<p>&#8220;But I should deal with the past as well, because of course, I did own stocks and shares in the past, quite naturally, as my father was a stockbroker.</p>
<p>&#8220;I sold them all in 2010, because if I was going to become Prime Minister, I didn&#8217;t want anyone to say you&#8217;ve got other agendas or vested interests or all the rest of it. Samantha and I had a joint account, and we owned 5,000 units in Blairmore Investment Trust, which we sold in January 2010. That was worth something like £30,000.&#8221;</p>
<p>Mr Cameron said he was not able to &#8220;point to every source of every bit of the money&#8221; that his father left him when he died &#8211; which he said amounted to around £300,000.</p>
<p>Pressed on whether he benefited from any part of the estate that was based in Jersey, he said: &#8220;Dad&#8217;s not around for me to ask the questions now. But he was a very hardworking man. He built up a business. He left his house to my brother. He left me some money, and left things to my brothers and sisters, too.</p>
<p>&#8220;And I think, you know, there&#8217;s pretty good transparency about all of that. And as I&#8217;ve said, in the future I&#8217;m not benefiting from any Cameron family trust. At the moment I own no shares, no investments. I have savings.&#8221;</p>
<p>Mr Cameron said in 2012 that he was happy to publish his own tax return &#8211; but the idea has not been put into practice.</p>
<p>He told ITV that he remained relaxed that it should be the norm for prime ministers &#8211; and leaders of the opposition &#8211; to have their status opened to scrutiny.</p>
<p>&#8220;I&#8217;m happy to, you know, go and get on and do that now. Whether we do it, you know, every year or starting now or going back a couple of years. Whatever. I&#8217;m very happy with that.</p>
<p>&#8220;And that will be a big change so we shouldn&#8217;t, you know, dive into it and suddenly insist everyone has to do it. But I think if people really want prime minister, potential prime minister, as I said before, I&#8217;m relaxed about that and I&#8217;m happy to do that.&#8221;</p>
<p>Mr Cameron&#8217;s father Ian, who died in 2010, was a director of Blairmore Holdings Inc, which, until 2006, used unregistered &#8220;bearer shares&#8221; to protect its clients&#8217; privacy.</p>
<p>His use of the firm to help shield investments from UK tax helped build up a significant legacy, part of which was inherited by the PM.</p>
<p>There is no suggestion that this avoidance arrangement or others exposed by the leak were anything but entirely legal.</p>
<p>Labour&#8217;s John Mann insisted Mr Cameron should resign and labelled the PM a &#8220;hypocrite&#8221;.</p>
<p>The Treasury Select Committee member wrote on Twitter: &#8220;Cameron has been less than honest. He should resign immediately. Most decent people would expect nothing less.&#8221;</p>
<p>Mr Mann, MP for Bassetlaw, added: &#8220;Cameron has had six years to be honest with Parliament and the people. He failed to do so. Get out now hypocrite.<br />
&#8220;Cameron issue is simple. He covered-up and misled. How he got his shares is irrelevant. He has no choice but to resign.&#8221;</p>
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