George Michael is among the 1,600 wealthy celebrities, business leaders, lawyers and doctors who together tried to shelter £1.2billion via a complicated network of offshore companies.

As it is reported, the famous singer concealed incomes from the sale of his records and tours through “Mercury Tax Group” based in Leeds from 2005 to 2009.

The Mercury scheme, which is actually named “Liberty”, was also used by other famous people such as Gary Barlow, Sir Michael Caine and Katie Melua to allegedly conceal their incomes.

The scheme generated large artificial losses offshore and allowing them to avoid taxes on other income.

It should also be noted that even though the scheme is said to be legal,  it has been investigated for more than a decade.