I wrote a letter to the Editor, it has
yet to be published, and based on past behaviour may not be:
Editor
MSL
Dear Sir,
The PM has stated that he knows
nothing about the Cook Islands tax haven set up. Can your newspaper confirm the
following?
Prior to becoming PM key was director
in these companies
Deutsche Pacific formerly Bankers Trust based in Cook Islands for tax purposes
Deutsche Futures formerly Bankers Trust Futures
Deutsche Financial formerly Bankers Trust Financial
Deutsche Corporate Finance formerly Bankers Trust Finance
Deutsche Services formerly Bankers Trust Services
Deutsche Pacific formerly Bankers Trust based in Cook Islands for tax purposes
Deutsche Futures formerly Bankers Trust Futures
Deutsche Financial formerly Bankers Trust Financial
Deutsche Corporate Finance formerly Bankers Trust Finance
Deutsche Services formerly Bankers Trust Services
After Key became PM: He paid back
Deutsche back with interest:
The Treasury appointed Deutsche Bank as the Crown's Financial Advisor for
preparatory work it is doing to extend the mixed ownership model to four State Owned Enterprises.
Treasury's General Manager John Crawford said: "We are pleased to be working with Deutsche Bank and Craig’s Investment
Partners who were selected after a rigorous assessment process from a strong line up of credible candidates."
A strong line of credible candidates… yeah right
The Treasury appointed Deutsche Bank as the Crown's Financial Advisor for
preparatory work it is doing to extend the mixed ownership model to four State Owned Enterprises.
Treasury's General Manager John Crawford said: "We are pleased to be working with Deutsche Bank and Craig’s Investment
Partners who were selected after a rigorous assessment process from a strong line up of credible candidates."
A strong line of credible candidates… yeah right
Peter Wheeler
Now back in 2013 a Nicky Hager
investigative report was published: The reference below takes you to that
report:
I have repeated only a part of this
report below to simply show how bad things were in NZ at the time that NZ
turned into a willing Tax Haven via the then Cook Islands…and remember Key has
said “I know nothing about the Cook Islands”…
The TrustNet leaks show New
Zealanders in key roles helping to run the system. TrustNet markets itself
today as the largest independent offshore services company in Asia. It was set
up 25 years ago by Kiwis in what was then the newly established Cook Islands
tax haven.
In the early 1980s business lobbyists
from New Zealand and Australia persuaded the Cook Islands government that
becoming a tax haven would bring riches to the small island group. These
lobbyists included New Zealander lawyer Trevor Clarke, "father of the Cook
Islands tax haven", who with others used the new tax haven laws to build a
company called European Pacific.
Documents about European Pacific's tax
schemes were leaked and tabled in the New Zealand Parliament by MP Winston
Peters, igniting the Winebox scandal (see breakout).
Another key figure was New Zealand
lawyer Mike Mitchell, the Cook Islands solicitor-general in the early 1980s and
main government adviser as the tax haven was established. He resigned from that
role in 1986 to move into the offshore business himself. On April 29, 1987, he
established an offshore services company called Pacific Trustee Company. The
company was later renamed TrustNet, the company at the centre of last week's
leaks.
TrustNet's first chief executive was
another New Zealand lawyer, Steve Breed, who was joined a few years later by
fellow Auckland law school graduate David Sceats. Early staff included people
who'd worked on the Cook Islands Winebox schemes. The European Pacific tax
expert accused in court of leaking the Winebox documents, New Zealand lawyer
George Couttie, had moved on to work for TrustNet in Hong Kong. But soon after
this accusation was made, according to internal documents, senior TrustNet
staff recorded a terse company resolution that "accepted" his
resignation "effective from the date hereof".
In contrast, European Pacific's former
senior executive Geoff Barry was later hired by TrustNet and rose to become the
chief executive officer. Today, 10 years later, he is executive director of
TrustNet's Hong Kong office.
Spencer's ownership of TrustNet was
never publicised. It came to light only during analysis of the leaked records.
A note about an obscure offshore entity says "Client is our big boss, John
Spencer".
Spencer, who had inherited his
family's Caxton toilet paper empire, owned, with his family, a majority share
of TrustNet from July 1990 until September 2004, through a Bahamas company
called International Trustee Holding Company Limited. John and Berridge Spencer
also used TrustNet to place some of their own money and investments in a
complex web of offshore companies and trusts. These were based in the British
Virgin Islands and Cook Islands, with names such as Northern Lights Trust, Star
One Trust and Tristar Capital Service Limited. A spokesperson for the Spencer
family said neither John nor Berridge Spencer have been New Zealand residents
since the 1990s and in those circumstances it was hardly surprising that the
family have assets invested outside of New Zealand.
With the Spencers' backing TrustNet
grew quickly, opening offices in Hong Kong in 1991, the British Virgin Islands
in 1993 and Singapore in 1994. The early clients included a controversial
Indonesian rainforest logging tycoon named Prajogo Pangestu, who had four
British Virgin Islands companies.
TREVOR CLARKE
Another TrustNet client was the former
European Pacific manager Trevor Clarke. He had his own set of offshore
companies and trusts administered by TrustNet. They were home to millions of
dollars of assets, the leaked documents reveal, and TrustNet staff was given
special instructions about keeping them secret. One document reads: "We
are to contact Trevor by phone only unless otherwise instructed . . . No
documents are to be kept here. All docs are to be held in our Hong Kong
office."
Clarke was appointed chair of the Cook
Islands' new Financial Supervisory Commission from 2003 until 2010, which was
set up to oversee the offshore industry. Throughout those years he had the
secretive offshore trusts and companies. Clarke responded that he was not
"a user of any Cook Islands entities" - his companies and trusts were
in Samoa and the British Virgin Islands - and said these were set up well
before his role as FSC chair. He had disclosed them to a number of authorities.
He said there were lots of reasons for people to want to have assets outside
the country where they live. The secrecy instructions did not come from him, he
said.
The TrustNet files also show a close
relationship between the company and the BNZ and ANZ banks, which had dedicated
staff for offshore banking. The leaked documents show bank staff routinely
helping TrustNet move money in and out of its clients' offshore bank accounts
held at the BNZ Singapore branch and ANZ Cook Islands branch.
In September 2004, the Spencers sold
TrustNet to a Singaporean offshore lawyer named David Chong. But many of the
New Zealanders, especially lawyers, continued to work in the company and be
part of tax haven politics.
Lawyers created the
offshore world and lawyers and accountants run it. They lobby in each tax haven
for special laws to attract clients and often actually write the laws
themselves. The leaked TrustNet papers show this clearly in the minutes of
the Cook Islands Trust Company Association.
The offshore services company heads
are seen sitting around deciding what laws they want, putting the hat around
for money to have them drafted and then arranging to present the new laws to
the Cook Islands government. The same lawyers then use these laws to help their
clients.
They also deal with the problems when
things go wrong. One of their New Zealand lawyers Penny Purcell was on duty,
for instance, when two officers from the Hong Kong Commercial Crime Bureau
turned up on August 20, 2007, at TrustNet’s harbour-front offices. They were
investigating a fraud case involving a British Virgin Islands company called
Sound Financial Management Limited.
The secret TrustNet files include
Purcell’s written record of the meeting. Detective Sergeant Steven Lam produced
a formal letter from the Hong Kong commissioner of police requesting ‘‘all
relevant documents’’ about Sound Financial Management Limited and details of
the company’s director and shareholder. Purcell replied that the officers would
need to contact TrustNet’s British Virgin Islands office and, according to her
own notes, assured them ‘‘we do not keep any files or records here’’.
She said the police ‘‘were surprised’’
the office had no records and asked how this could be ‘‘if the client is based
here in Hong Kong’’. ‘‘I then explained,’’ Purcell wrote, ‘‘that we acted as a
marketing/secretarial office but that all information including the registers
of the Company were kept in its registered office.’’
Detective Sergeant Lam tried one last
time, she wrote, asking if they kept any information there in Hong Kong,
including correspondence. ‘‘I said no,’’ Purcell wrote. A few days later
TrustNet repeated the denial by letter. ‘‘Portcullis TrustNet (Hong Kong)
Limited does not hold any corporate or statutory records of the Company, nor is
it required to,’’ the letter said. However, the details the police were looking
for would have been instantly available on Portcullis computer. The leaked
TrustNet documents show that she routinely used the company’s Offshore
Management Information System (OMIS), which was available in all the TrustNet
offices and contained all the client records.
The OMIS database, which was leaked to
ICIJ, lists Sound Financial Management’s director and shareholder as Glen
Douglas Crankshaw, a Canadian living near Bangkok. TrustNet helped his company
open a bank account at the Standard Chartered Bank, Hong Kong branch, located
on the ground floor of the same building as TrustNet. According to Purcell’s
notes, she told them none of this. Two years later the Hong Kong police issued
an arrest warrant for Crankshaw for ‘‘dealing with property known or reasonably
believed to represent the proceeds of indictable crime’’. They had traced him
through a different offshore company, with the similar name ‘‘GS Sound
Management Limited’’.
Purcell has since returned to help run
TrustNet’s office on Auckland’s North Shore. She remains part of a network of
New Zealand offshore lawyers scattered in tax havens around the world. They
include former TrustNet lawyer Barry Mitchell who, according to court
documents, gave assistance during the setting up of the Trinity investment
scheme, New Zealand’s largest tax avoidance case; and Act Party-aligned blogger
Cathy Odgers (‘‘Cactus Kate’’) who has worked as an offshore lawyer in the
British Virgin Islands and Hong Kong.
Various offshore lawyers have brought
their skills home, taking advantage of New Zealand’s loose company and trust
law.
The original TrustNet lawyers, Breed
and Sceats, came home and set up Nexus Trust, promoting New Zealand’s tax haven
potential to foreign clients. Two other former Cook Island lawyers, Nick
Shepherd and (former European Pacific executive) Mike Reynolds set up Anchor
Trustees which offers services to ‘‘non-resident families and
corporates’’.
Long-term TrustNet client Tim Brears
on Auckland’s North Shore offers clients advice on the ‘‘advantages of moving
ownership and control of assets and investment offshore out of New Zealand’’.
Nicky Hager has worked in a
multi-country team for the past 15 months analysing the leaked materials and co-ordinating
local journalists in Asia, Africa and part of Europe who collaborated in the
International Consortium of Investigative Journalists project, www.icij.org.
- Sunday Star Times
It should be
noted that Act
Party-aligned blogger Cathy Odgers
(‘‘Cactus Kate’’) who has worked as an offshore lawyer in the British Virgin
Islands and Hong Kong. Is the same person who said if given Nicky Hager,s
address she would pass it on to shady Chinese business people…both Cameron Slater [Whaleoil] and Mathew Hooten supplied Hager
address. So much for honesty amongst thieves…
