August 2 2016
An offshore bank owned by Tory donor Lord Ashcroft has closed a large number of customer accounts and faced a wave of withdrawal requests after becoming increasingly caught up in a US tax-evasion crackdown, the Guardian has learned. The value of deposits at Belize Bank International (BBI) shrank by almost three-quarters in the space of just six months, and confidential emails seen by the Guardian suggest some BBI customers have struggled to recover their cash.
So stretched is the position that BBI in April told a court in Belize that it could not pay a $3.3m judgment against it without liquid assets falling below the minimum amount required by law.
