How Business Titans, Pop Stars and Royals Hide Their Wealth
- 6 years ago
How Business Titans, Pop Stars and Royals Hide Their Wealth
Asiaciti set up trusts in the Cook Islands for Kevin Trudeau, an infomercial pitchman in the United States with a trail of legal
troubles who sold millions of copies of such self-help books as “The Weight-Loss Cure ‘They’ Don’t Want You to Know About.”
Founded in 1898 by a British officer, Maj. Reginald Appleby — an avowed opponent of taxation — Appleby now has offices in nearly all the world’s tax havens:
Bermuda, the British Virgin Islands, the Cayman Islands, Guernsey, Hong Kong, the Isle of Man, Jersey, Mauritius, the Seychelles and Shanghai.
Ray D. Madoff, a professor of law at Boston College who focuses on philanthropies and taxes, said
that in terms of oversight and transparency, “the first sin was whatever it was that allowed however many billions of dollars of a U. S. citizen to be growing tax free in Bermuda.”
But Michael G. Pfeifer, a Washington lawyer who specializes in estate planning for wealthy people
and helped write the tax rules governing overseas trusts, said that Mr. Simons merely followed the rules.
But Mr. Simons and Mr. Stephens are both billionaires who have used the services of offshore finance — the trusts and shell companies
that the world’s wealthiest people use to park their money beyond the reach of tax collectors and out of the public eye.
Yet factoring the trust into his wealth isn’t so straightforward,
because Mr. Simons says his share is now in an offshore charity, Simons Foundation International.
Appleby appears to be more scrupulous than another offshore firm, Panama-based Mossack Fonseca, about shunning overtly corrupt
and criminal clients, based on a comparison of the Appleby files with the leaked Panama Papers, which drew global coverage last year.
Asiaciti set up trusts in the Cook Islands for Kevin Trudeau, an infomercial pitchman in the United States with a trail of legal
troubles who sold millions of copies of such self-help books as “The Weight-Loss Cure ‘They’ Don’t Want You to Know About.”
Founded in 1898 by a British officer, Maj. Reginald Appleby — an avowed opponent of taxation — Appleby now has offices in nearly all the world’s tax havens:
Bermuda, the British Virgin Islands, the Cayman Islands, Guernsey, Hong Kong, the Isle of Man, Jersey, Mauritius, the Seychelles and Shanghai.
Ray D. Madoff, a professor of law at Boston College who focuses on philanthropies and taxes, said
that in terms of oversight and transparency, “the first sin was whatever it was that allowed however many billions of dollars of a U. S. citizen to be growing tax free in Bermuda.”
But Michael G. Pfeifer, a Washington lawyer who specializes in estate planning for wealthy people
and helped write the tax rules governing overseas trusts, said that Mr. Simons merely followed the rules.
But Mr. Simons and Mr. Stephens are both billionaires who have used the services of offshore finance — the trusts and shell companies
that the world’s wealthiest people use to park their money beyond the reach of tax collectors and out of the public eye.
Yet factoring the trust into his wealth isn’t so straightforward,
because Mr. Simons says his share is now in an offshore charity, Simons Foundation International.
Appleby appears to be more scrupulous than another offshore firm, Panama-based Mossack Fonseca, about shunning overtly corrupt
and criminal clients, based on a comparison of the Appleby files with the leaked Panama Papers, which drew global coverage last year.