Delo runs first story in Slovenian part of Panama Papers
The paper says data obtained by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) shows that UPC has helped Slovenians and some other nationals register at least 17 companies in tax havens.
The head and indirect owner of UPC is 36-year-old Uroš Petrovič, who Delo says labels himself a tax consultant.
UPC's services include tax and financial consulting and the setting-up of companies in Slovenia and abroad.
In a brochure from 2012, UPC is presented as a company with employees who have taken part in "hundreds of tax inspection procedures" and "have conducted over three hundred tax optimisations", he told the paper.
Among the 17 companies UPC helped register, all but one were set up in Anguilla, a British overseas territory in the Caribbean, were there are virtually no taxes, internal data of Mossack Fonseca shows.
The documents reveal that in ordering and paying for the services of Mossack Fonseca, Petrovič almost always requested that UPC be billed not from Panama but from Anguilla or any other jurisdiction not subject to a 15% tax rate in Slovenia for such transactions.
Anguilla is not on the list of non-EU countries with tax rates lower than 12.5% whose companies are obligated to pay tax to Slovenia on certain revenue stemming from Slovenia while Panama is, says the Slovenian Financial Administration.
The leaked correspondence between Petrovič and Mossack Fonseca also shows Petrovič as being very protective of some of UPC's potentially controversial clients about which Mossack Fonseca had inquired.
Moreover, Delo says that the documents show Petrovič not respecting a provision from the contract between UPC and Mossack Fonseca that UPC will provide all information to ensure legitimacy of the business operations of its clients.
In response, Petrovič told Delo that tax laws were not being violated in Slovenia or elsewhere in any of the cases. He added that the companies were mostly not doing business themselves but merely had shares in other companies.
Petrovič also highlighted in his response to Delo that there was a distinction between tax planning, which is completely legal and legitimate, and tax evasion, which is illegal. Delo notes that just because a company is registered in a tax haven should not be understood automatically to mean that it is involved in criminal activities.
The paper promised to provide more detail in a series of reports that will be published in the coming days.
According to the documents analysed so far, at least 74 Slovenians are reportedly associated with companies set up through Mossack Fonseca or its intermediaries. In total, at least 78 companies who appear in the Panama Papers are reportedly associated with Slovenians.