Bono Among Names Leaked in Tax-Haven Documents

U2 frontman Bono has been named in a series of leaked documents that reveal investments in tax havens by some of the world’s wealthiest people.

According to a report in the Guardian, Bono (real name Paul Hewson) used a company based in Malta to buy part of a shopping mall in Lithuania. The Maltese company, Nude Estates, bought the Aušra mall for about $6.7 million in 2007. Nude Estates incorporated a Lithuanian company of the same name to hold the property in Utena, 60 miles north of the Lithuanian capital, Vilnius. Five years later, the mall was transferred to a company in Guernsey, a Channel Island off the coast of France.

The leaked documents, known as the Paradise Papers, comprise some 13.4 million files, many of which deal with a law firm and corporate-services provider that operated under the name Appleby. For foreign investors in Malta, the tax paid on profits earned by companies is just 5%. In Guernsey, no tax is paid on company profits.

A spokeswoman for Bono told the Guardian that the singer was a “passive minority investor in Nude Estates Malta Ltd., a company that was legally registered in Malta until it was voluntarily wound up in 2015.”

Last week, U2 announced the details of their forthcoming album, Songs of Experience, sharing the tracklist and cover art, and unveiling another cut called “Get Out of Your Own Way,” featuring Kendrick Lamar. They’ll kick off a North American tour in 2018. Tickets go on sale Nov. 20.