Cabinet minister Andrew Mitchell issued an angry denial after a TV investigation accused him of avoiding tax on an overseas fund.
The MP for Sutton Coldfield, who is International Development Secretary, was criticised in an episode of Channel 4’s Dispatches programme shown on Monday.
But he insisted the claims about him were untrue. Mr Mitchell said: “I am an investor in an international property fund which is properly governed.
“I will be paying full UK tax on any profits which may emerge.”
The MP was said to have invested at least £130,000 in two property investment funds in the British Virgin Islands.
But those had not yet made a profit, and any profits they did return would be recorded as income and taxed in the UK in the usual way, according to the MP.
He was believed to have instructed lawyers to examine the contents of the programme, which also made claims about the financial affairs of Chancellor George Osborne, and Transport Secretary Philip Hammond.
It was reported that Mr Hammond, whose £7.5million fortune makes him one of the wealthiest of the cabinet’s 18 millionaires, paid himself share dividends instead of a salary from his property firm Castlemead.
Dispatches also claimed that Mr Osborne, who stands to inherit a fortune from his father’s luxury wallpaper firm, stood to gain more than £4 million from a trust fund, with the arrangements allegedly saving him and other beneficiaries £1.6 million in inheritance tax.
A source close to Mr Mitchell described the programme as “gutter journalism”.
