At a hearing of the European Parliament’s committee investigating the Panama Papers scandal on Tuesday 9 May, MEPs were looking forward to speaking with representatives of Madeira, Gibraltar, Jersey and Guernsey.
It was the representative of Madeira, which several MEPs accuse of being a tax haven, who was the first to face the hazards of the hearing. The island’s secretary of state for finance said it was certainly a heavenly haven but not a tax haven.
Madeira is an outermost region...