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Offshore Leaks Database

Data from
Paradise Papers - The Power Players
Secretary of commerce, U.S. (2016-present)

Wilbur Louis Ross, Jr.

About

Wilbur L. Ross was appointed U.S. secretary of commerce by President Donald Trump, a position he has held since February 2017.

In the data

Ross, a billionaire Wall Street investor known for buying distressed companies, was a major client of Appleby, which administered more than 50 companies and partnerships that invested in a range of industries on behalf of his private equity firm, W.L. Ross & Co, LLC. Ross divested himself of most of his business interests when he joined the Trump Cabinet in February 2017. But he kept a stake in the shipping company Navigator Holdings through a chain of companies in the Cayman Islands, Appleby’s files and public records show. Ross previously served on Navigator’s board, and WL Ross & Co., which he headed until joining the Cabinet, has been Navigator’s largest shareholder since 2012.

One of Navigator’s biggest clients is a Russian gas and petrochemicals company called Sibur, which has close ties to the Kremlin.

Response

A spokesman for Ross said that he has never met Shamalov, Timchenko or Mikhelson. He said that Ross “recuses himself from any matters focused of transoceanic shipping vessels, but has been generally supportive of the administration’s sanctions of Russian and Venezuelan entities.”
This visualization contains relevant information in relation to the profiled individual. Some additional connections might show up once we release the full structured data connected to the Paradise Papers investigation in the coming weeks.

Disclaimer

There are legitimate uses for offshore companies and trusts. The inclusion of a person or entity in the ICIJ Offshore Leaks Database is not intended to suggest or imply that they have engaged in illegal or improper conduct. Many people and entities have the same or similar names. We suggest you confirm the identities of any individuals or entities included in the database based on addresses or other identifiable information. The data comes directly from the leaked files ICIJ has received in connection with various investigations and each dataset encompasses a defined time period specified in the database. Some information may have changed over time. Please contact us if you find an error in the database.

There are legitimate uses for offshore companies and trusts. Read more