Priscila Lustre Taylor (extract from google books)

Published by Jakal Intel

October 3rd, 2016

Vila accounting firm, BDO Barrett, did not offer tax reductions, claiming its

heavy promotion of this, on its website and elsewhere, was merely a ploy to

draw clients to other accounting services such as asset protection. His media

portrayal of Vanuatu's OFC (common among Finance Centre Association

members, who publicly reject the term 'tax haven was complicated in August

by the arrest in Queensland of another Port Vila insider, accountant Brian

Francis Fox of Hawkes Law, a correspondent of KPMG, for allegedly

conspiring to defraud Australia of more than S7m of tax revenues between 1999

and 2001 by promoting a scheme unrelated to Aguis's. In February 2009

Lynette McPhee Liles, past President of Australia's National Institute of

Accountants, was charged in Sydney along with her clients, including television

producers Michael Boughen and Wayne Cameron (Perfect Match, Deal or No

Deal, Celebrity Big Brother), over another (310m) Vanuatu-based tax

avoidance scheme. In June 2011 an unprecedented ruling ordered Boughen and

Cameron to serve their two-year sentences at home, not in jail.

Early Australian court judgments relating to Agius, for which PKF Vanuatu

employed Tom Hughes QC and other expensive lawyers to defend its interests,

and Liles showed a stratification of clients. Wealthy businessman Phillip

Grimaldi, who held major shareholdings in Murchison Metals through

Vanuatu-registered RLB Investments, agreed in July 2009 to pay S32m in tax

and penalties, despite protests from his lawyer that before Grimaldi became

involved in the scheme Agius had shown Grimaldi an advisory letter from

prominent lawyer Richard Edmonds QC, now a Federal Court Judge, approving

it as legitimate and lawful. Far less fortunate were those of more modest means,

who faced imprisonment. Small businessman James Gerard O'Rourke was

sentenced to two and a half years in prison in July 2010 for a tax fraud of about

$140,000. Two owners of a relatively small carpentry and painting business,

Anthony Hili and Glyn Jones, despite early pleading guilty and cooperating

with authorities, were in November 2009 each fined about $1m in back taxes

and penalties and sentenced to prison terms of eighteenth months each, upheld

on appeal. The elderly small businesspeople Reinhart and Barbara Leimroth

cooperated even more with authorities and were close to bankruptcy after

paying about $700,000 for evading around $120,000 in taxes, but were still

each given a sixteen-month prison sentence in October 2010. •Ihere were

supposed to be more prosecutions, as the Agius trial, which was likely to be

lengthy, was still not under way in June 2011.

Vanuatu's OFC subculture became somewhat flustered and ill at ease, less

certain of the reliability of the country's government and sovereignty as a

defence of offshore business. It complained about Australia's $40m in annual

foreign aid producing undue accommodation by Vanuatu's government. It

relied on indigenous political allies to reassert its power and weaken its internal

and external opponents. In February 2011 Vanuatu's government, particularly

Reserve Bank Governor Odo Tevi, threatened to join ANZ Bank in its

Australian Federal Court action to prevent Australian tax officials from

accessing Australian-connected accounts in Vanuatu. In May 2011 Vanuatu

swiftly expelled Ari Jenshel, an Australian government lawyer seconded to its

attorney-general's office, after Port Vila's police began investigating whether

he had leaked sensitive haven information to Australian tax authorities (AP

29/4/08, 4/5/08; AFR 1/5/08, 8/5/08, 5/6/08, 8/6/08, 11/2/09, 26/5/09, 1/3/10,

23/10/10, 9/12/10, 18/6/11; Age 30/4/08, 1/5/08, 14/11/09; Australian 30/4/08,

1/5/08, 6/5/08, 8/5/08, 22/5/08, 29/5/08, 13/8/08, 24/2/11, 25/5/11; CT 25/7/10;

PACNEWS 1-2/5/08, 7-8/5/08, 20/5/08, 9/6/08; SMH 29-30/4/08, 7/5/08;

Sunday Times (Perth) 4/5/08; VDP 18/10/07, 6/5/08, 12/5/08, 16/5/08, 15/7/08,

27/7/08).

Controlling impressions and potentially damaging information are problems

for all OFCs, not least Vanuatu. After 11 September 2001, the US attempted to

restrict identified tax havens, but Port Vila's GT Group saw a beguiling

alternative. It registered 2,496 shell companies in New Zealand, which had

never appeared on any blacklist. It provided each with a sole nominee

shareholder — its wholly owned VicAm (Auckland)

and a sole nominee

director, such as GT employee Nesita Manceau, residing in Vanuatu.

Sometimes, it added further layers of holding companies in such havens such as

Vanuatu, the Cook Islands and Samoa, which further disguised real owners'

identities.

Sir Professor Dr Geoffrey Taylor, born in England in 1943, seemed to add

dignity to his GT Group. He was High Representative to Vanuatu, company

director and Lord of the Manor of Stubbington in Britain. Behind these

appearances were concealed realities. His doctorate and professorship were

from his own online degree mill, Southern Pacific University (registered in the

havens of Belize, St Kitts and Nevis, and the US state of Delaware). His

knighthood and diplomatic appointment were from the pseudo-state of Hutt

River Province (claiming to have seceded from Australia). The only listed

company he had ever directed (Sabina Corporation in Australia) had never built

its grand proposed property developments. His feudal title was the sort that