ONE OF FACEBOOK’S co-founders Eduardo Saverin has renounced his US citizenship just days ahead of the company going public for the first time.
A spokesperson for Brazilian-born Saverin said he found it “more practical” to become a resident of Singapore as he planned to live there for an indefinite period of time.
Saverin fled to Miami in 1993 after it was revealed that his name had been placed on a list of potential kidnapping targets by gangs seeking to extort ransoms from wealthy people. He has lived in Singapore since 2009, the Telegraph reports.
Saverin moved to quit his US citizenship in September 2011, however this only became public last week when a list of Americans renouncing their citizenship was published by the US Internal Revenue Service.
As a result of renouncing his US citizenship, Saverin – one of the four co-founders of the social networking site – will avoid paying taxes amounting to an estimated $600 million (€467 million) when he collects his share of the site’s stock offering, the BBC reports.
Facebook hopes to raise as much as $10.6 billion (€8.3 billion) when it makes its initial public offering on Friday. Saverin holds 4 per cent of the site’s stock, putting his personal wealth at about $4 billion (€3.1 billion).
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