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Offshore Leaks Database

Data from
Paradise Papers - The Power Players
Former president, Costa Rica (1994-1998); former director and CEO, World Economic Forum (2000-2004)

José María Figueres

Related to

Costa Rica Bermuda Italy

About

José María Figueres was Costa Rica’s president from 1994 to 1998 and served as a managing director and later as CEO of the World Economic Forum from 2000 until 2004. He resigned following allegations that he had received more than $900,000 in consulting fees from a French telecommunications company, in breach of WEF rules. Figueres called the accusation “unfounded and unsubstantiated.”

In the data

In 2001 and 2002, during his time with WEF, Figueres sat on the board of directors of Energia Global International Ltd., a renewable-energy company incorporated in Bermuda in 1997 with business interests in Central and South America. In 2001, EGI became a subsidiary of Enel SpA when the Italian power company bought it for $73 million, plus $37 million in debt cancellation, according to news reports.

Appleby records show that Figueres’ brother Mariano and Timothy Phillips, an EGI founder and an adviser to former U.S. President Bill Clinton, were company officers. Figueres resigned from EGI’s board of directors with a handwritten note dated December 2001 from Davos, Switzerland, where the WEF holds its annual meeting.

In 2003, the company moved to Delaware from Bermuda because, according to an Appleby note, “[d]ue to changes in tax laws in EU, Bermuda is now classified as a negative tax jurisdiction for Italian shareholders.”

Response

Figueres said that his position at EGI was unpaid and did not represent a conflict of interest with his work at WEF because his contract did not prohibit him from serving on boards. Since the beginning of 2000, WEF employees are not allowed to take additional paying jobs, and unremunerated work requires the board’s approval, a spokeswoman said adding that she was unable to determine whether Figueres sought or obtained WEF’s approval to be on EGI’s board.
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. Record manually added from leaked documents.

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.

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