British Prime Minister David Cameron said on Saturday he could have handled the row over his financial affairs better and promised to learn the lesson.
“It’s not been a great week. I know that I should have handled this better, I could have handled this better,” Cameron said at a meeting of members of his Conservative Party in London according to a BBC report.
On Thursday, the British prime minister said he once had a stake in his father’s offshore trust and had profited from it. A wave of criticism and calls for his resignation followed.
Cameron said he alone was to blame for how the revelations about his father’s offshore investment fund had been dealt with. “I know there are lessons to learn and I will learn them,” he said.
“Don’t blame Number 10 Downing Street or nameless advisers, blame me,” the British prime minister said, adding that he was very angry for what people said about his father. “I loved my dad, I miss him every day.”
“He was a wonderful father and I’m very proud of everything he did. But I mustn’t let that cloud the picture. The facts are these: I bought shares in a unit trust, shares that are like any other sorts of shares and I paid taxes on them in exactly the same way.”
The prime minister promised he would publish information that goes into his tax return, “not just for this year but the years gone past because I want to be completely open and transparent about these things.”
The Panama Papers, revealed that Cameron’s late father was a client of Mossack Fonseca when establishing a fund for investors.