January 2005 Archives

A recent search of OffshoreNet has found very little information related to South Pacific Offshore Tax Havens, since then I've had the South Pacific on my mind. The closest I've ever been to the South Pacific is Hawaii when I was 18 years old, or Queensland Australia in my mid-20's.

In 1985 I was first-mate on a 61' sloop named Ok-Tedi, we made anchorage in a protected bay of an island called King's Island. According to the map we were north of the Barrier Reef and about 5 miles from the shore of the Daintree Rainforest on Cape Tribulation, which placed us a days sail from Papua New Guinea, geographically we were in the South Pacific but a long way from an offshore bank.

Today was the final day (for this year) of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland and the question always gets asked "was anything achieved" or is there more rhetoric than results? I for one think it's a great concept and find it very amusing that celebrities share a podium with business leaders and politicians.

Last year was the first year that a Blog was deployed for the WEF and a collective of writers empowered to share their observations (see:www.forumblog.org), now this has quickly become the most popular way for the world to learn more about this one-of-a-kind event. There's also great resources of documents for the meeting summaries and an excellent archive of videos to access from home computers but definitely the Blog has been the big topic of discussion this year. Today, since it's the last day, there were some great articles reviewing the highlights.

A new look and a new strategy. The time has come for the OffshoreNet Blog to take on a more engaging role. If you've come here before you'd know that this Blog was not original content but a collection of articles re-published from other sources. Well, now we've decided to change the format, add categories and more commentary, plus offer more original content.

By Zach Coleman -

After Mao Zedong led the Communists to victory in 1949, China's new rulers suppressed gambling as a social evil on a par with prostitution and opium.

But, as with so many other topics, Mao's heirs to power in Beijing are much more equivocal about gambling today.

Last month, officials from the Ministry of Finance joined an unprecedented international conference in the capital to discuss legalizing it.

By Joe Mozingo -

The Haitian sloops ride the wind into port like rare tropical birds, their colorful hulls creaking and groaning, their ragged sails flapping against a backdrop of luxury cruise ships and beach resorts.

The sea traders sail like they have for 200 years, in rickety, hand-hewn wooden ships up to 70 feet long and painted in ways that make a rainbow look drab. No motor, no radio, no running lights -- just patched-up canvas sails, splintered rudders and crooked masts.

By David R. Francis -

It's a former Soviet ally that toyed briefly with a little free enterprise. Its people are some of the poorest in the hemisphere. Condoleezza Rice, President Bush's choice as secretary of State, has just labeled it one of six "outposts of tyranny" in the world.

That's Cuba, still clinging to its communist ways. And it has the economy to show for it. A bright spot - a new oil discovery - lifted hopes for the island nation last month. But don't count on a big change - unless there's a bigger find by Spain's largest oil company, Repsol, drilling in a separate offshore tract.

MIAMI (Reuters) - The U.S. government has seized an Arizona oil company and its wells that it said on Tuesday were bought with illegal money from a convicted drug kingpin who kept assets concealed in an offshore maze for decades.

The Immigration and Customs Enforcement took over Shaboom Oil Inc. of Phoenix and its assets -- 43 wells in Pennsylvania's Allegheny National Forest worth about $1 million, plus mineral rights to 1,100 acres of land in the forest and several trusts and bank accounts in Monaco.

by Evelyn J. Pringle -

Of course, by now everybody has at least heard of Halliburton, the all-time poster child for war profiteering. But I'll bet most people don't understand exactly how this company has gone the full financial circle in Iraq. Some background info may be helpful.

First of all it helps to know that between 1999 and 2002, Halliburton gave more than $700,000 in political contributions, almost always to Republicans. In 2000, it donated $17,677 to Bush. In fact, the 70 or so companies that were awarded contracts in Iraq have contributed more money to Bush than they have to any other candidate over the past 12 years.

By Kathrin Hille -

Taiwan's financial regulator is considering creating an offshore stock market in an effort to establish the island as a regional fund-raising centre.

The Financial Supervisory Commission also wants to improve the listing requirements as part of a plan to double capital raising by foreign investors.

The offshore proposal, which could be implemented by 2007 at the earliest if approved, is also an attempt to skirt around restrictions on domestic listings of companies with substantial investments in China.

by Harvey D. Shapiro -

The Gnomes of Zurich. The Banques Privée. Swiss bankers. For centuries, banking has been as closely associated with Switzerland as fashion is with Paris and oil is with Saudi Arabia. Indeed, the roughly 350 banks in this country of fewer than 9 million people manage about $2.7 trillion, fully one-third of the entire world’s offshore wealth.

By Sean McKibbon -

A Brockville, Ontario, man accused of scamming U.S. and Canadian investors for hundreds of thousands of dollars in an offshore investment scheme has told a court he did nothing wrong and the RCMP just doesn't understand. "There has been a catastrophic failure to understand anything I did by the RCMP," said the self-represented Don Galna, 62, as he asked unsuccessfully to have the chief investigator in the case barred from the courtroom except when testifying.

By Matt Richtel -

The Isle of Man, a British crown dependency in the Irish Sea, is reversing a four-year-old policy that has deterred Internet casinos based there from accepting bets from United States residents.

The policy change, while affecting only a handful of Internet casinos, adds a wrinkle to an emerging trade battle between the United States and many other countries over Internet gambling.

By Michael Wines -

JOHANNESBURG, Jan. 13 - Sir Mark Thatcher, the son of a British political legend who became mired last year in a bizarre coup plot in Equatorial Guinea, abandoned his claims of innocence on Thursday and pleaded guilty in a Cape Town Court to helping finance mercenaries who were behind the failed putsch.

But as part of a plea agreement that spared him a potential prison sentence, Sir Mark, who is a hereditary baronet, maintained that his role was unwitting and that he believed he was investing $275,000 in a helicopter service for a mining venture until he began to doubt the project's true goals in January 2004.

By Brian McWilliams -

Shiksaa, an anti-spam activist, learned that Scott Richter was the son of a certified public accountant and tax lawyer in San Diego.

Richter saw less of his dad, Steven S. Richter, after age 11, when his parents divorced and his dad moved out. But Richter had acquired his father's interest in making and holding onto money.

By Chuck Jaffe -

Yields on bank instruments continue to be wretched.

So some investors are going to great lengths to get better rates. Even if it means looking at offshore certificates of deposit.

The selling point is simple: Put your money in a foreign institution's bank certificate and earn between two and three times what you can get on a similar investment in the United States.

A prominent Petal businessman and founder of the International Checker Hall of Fame is free on bond following his arrest on money-laundering charges.

Charles Walker, 72, was arrested Friday by immigration and customs agents on a criminal complaint filed by the U.S. Attorney's office.

According to the complaint, Walker attempted to conduct a financial transaction with money that was reportedly obtained illegally in an effort to conceal or disguise the source of the money.

New York, NY --(www.FinancialNewsUSA.com)-- 01/10/2005 - Imagine having your livelihood, business and dreams ripped away in an instant. Everything you’ve worked for your entire life is stripped, taken in the blink of an eye. One day you’re a respected, productive and affluent citizen – the next you’re an enemy of the state.

Stories like these are not fiction. For businessmen from Russia and other countries where instability and corruption are ways of life, success can amount to ruins in a matter of days. One of the better known examples is the case of oil mogul Mikhail Khodorkovsky who was put in jail as the Russian government nationalized his company – the forth largest oil company in the world.

The Heritage Foundation, which promotes low taxes and limited government regulation, reports the United States is tied for 12th place with Switzerland in the 2005 Index of Economic Freedom. The world's second-largest economy, Japan, ranks 39th in the survey. The report shows "a net increase in global economic freedom" overall.

The United States has dropped out of the world's top 10 "freest economies" in a ranking released Tuesday by the conservative Heritage Foundation.

By Warren Vieth -

COLLINSVILLE, Ill. — President Bush today demanded congressional action this year to rein in what he called "junk" lawsuits against doctors and hospitals, saying the time had come to impose federal restraints on a system traditionally left to the states.

Taking his tort reform campaign to a southern Illinois county known as a hotbed of civil litigation, Bush said the prospect of big jury awards in medical malpractice cases was causing insurance rates to soar and doctors to abandon their practices.

By Michael Marchant -

Not since 1929, the year that marked the beginning of the Great Depression, has wealth in the U.S. been so heavily concentrated among the richest 1 percent of the population. This trend towards economic inequality increased sharply in 1970, and since that time there has been an enormous shift in the distribution of national income from the working class to the wealthiest Americans. For every consecutive year between 1970 and 2000, the annual incomes of the richest 10 percent of Americans have risen, without exception, while the annual incomes of the bottom 90 percent have declined. Even more startling, however, is that this income shift went almost entirely to the richest 5 percent (annual incomes of $178,000 and above), with the richest 1 percent (annual incomes ranging from $384,000 to $777,000) seeing the greatest increase compared to all other income groups. This trend is likely to grow by leaps and bounds during Bush’s second term in office.