A Paradise of Untouchable Assets
【By LESLIE WAYNE／聯合報／李京倫譯】
Picture a paradise where you can be lawsuit-proof. A place to hide your assets far from the grasp of former spouses, angry business partners or patients who might sue you.
Lawyers looking for business say they have found just the place: the Cook Islands. Hundreds of wealthy people have stashed their money there, including a felon who ran a $7 billion Ponzi scheme.
These tiny islands in the middle of the Pacific would be nothing more than lovely coral atolls except for one thing: The Cooks are a global pioneer in offshore asset-protection trusts, with laws devised to protect foreigners’ assets from legal claims in their home countries.
The Cayman Islands, Switzerland and the British Virgin Islands allow multinational corporations and the rich to shelter income from the American government. The Cook Islands offer a different form of secrecy: The y generally disregard foreign court orders.
Win a malpractice suit against your doctor? To collect, you will have to go to the other side of the globe to plead your case again before a Cooks court and under Cooks law.
Howard D. Rosen, a lawyer in Coral Gables, Florida, has set up Cook trusts for more than 20 years. Anyone with more than $1 million in assets, his firm’s website suggests, should consider Cook trusts for self-preservation, but especially real estate developers, health care providers, accountants, architects and corporate directors .
International regulators have become more aggressive in efforts to clamp down on tax haven countries and offshore banks ,but they have paid scant attention to the Cooks. Americans are the biggest customers of the trusts, which may be held only by foreigners, not Cook Islanders. There are 2,619 trusts, according to the Cooks’ Financial Supervisory Commission.
It is against the law in the Cooks to identify who owns the trusts or to provide any information about them.
But a cache of documents obtained by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, based in Washington, reveals the owners of about 700 Cook trusts. The data was among 2.5 million documents containing information about customers of offshore havens throughout the world. A study of the Cook Islands documents by The New York Times and the consortium shows that these trusts are popular with the wealthy in Palm Beach, Florida; New York; and Hollywood. The trust owners include people who have been convicted of Medicaid fraud, Ponzi schemes and bilking employee pension funds. Many others are simply rich.
The documents described a Cook trust held by Denise Rich, former wife of the disgraced trader Marc Rich, who was pardoned on the last day of Bill Clinton’s presidency. Her trust contained more than $100 million in assets, including her yacht, the 48-meter Lady Joy; a Learjet 60; and a Swiss bank account.
There is nothing illegal about setting up a Cook trust, and putting assets into one does not eliminate the requirement to pay taxes on those assets’ earnings. But the trusts have a following among those who suspect they could be sued: doctors facing malpractice suits, businessmen avoiding creditors and some who have been sued by the federal government.
R. Allen Stanford, who is serving a 110-year term for masterminding the $7 billion Ponzi scheme, had a “Baby Mama Trust” in the Cook Islands, named after a mistress with whom he had two children and who was the trust’s beneficiary. “Baby Mama” contained proceeds from the sale of a $2.5 million Florida home.
For the islands, the trust business has been a bonanza. The Cooks have a stable government and a sophisticated judiciary based in English common law. Business generated by the trusts — registration fees, taxes on trust companies and their employees, and various support services — accounts for just above 8 percent of the $300 million Cooks economy, after tourism and ahead of fishing.
Officials in the islands say they are planning to build on their success with Americans by marketing the trusts to customers in China and elsewhere in Asia.
New Asian customers can help the islands should American officials turn their attention to Cook trusts. But at the moment, that shift is not happening. “Washington looks at where the big money is,” said Stephen E. Shay, a tax professor at Harvard Law School and a former Treasury official.
“That means tax avoidance by multinationals. But as the government squeezes these big places, more money will go into smaller and smaller quarters, and that will make the Cooks a MICHAEL PROBST/ASSOCIATED PRESS target,” he said.
中譯
想像這麼個能讓你逃避官司的樂園。你可以把資產藏在這裡，讓前夫前妻、憤怒的生意夥伴或可能控告你的病患休想得著。
尋找案源的律師說，他們已發現這完美的地方：庫克群島。已經有幾百個有錢人把錢藏在這兒，包括一名主導規模70億美元龐氏騙局（老鼠會）的重犯。
這些位於太平洋中央的蕞爾小島除了是可愛的環礁外幾無特色，只有一件事例外：它是全球離岸資產保護信託的先鋒，該國法律設計可使外國人資產不受母國法律影響。
開曼群島、瑞士與英屬維京群島都能讓跨國公司和富人隱藏收入，不被美國政府發現。庫克群島提供不同形態的保密：一般而言不理會外國法院的命令。
你告醫生醫療疏失官司打贏了？想拿到賠償金，你得到地球另一端的庫克群島去，依當地法律，向當地法院再次陳述案情。美國佛州珊瑚泉市律師羅森在庫克群島代客設立信託帳戶逾20年。他的公司網站建議，任何人只要資產超過100萬美元，都該考慮庫克群島信託以保護資產，房地產開發商、醫護人員、會計、建築師與公司董事尤其如此。
國際監管單位對付避稅天堂國家與離岸銀行比以前積極，卻不怎麼注意庫克群島。庫克群島信託客戶以美國人最多，這些信託帳戶只對外國人開放，島民不得開立。庫克群島金融監督委員會統計，該國有2619個信託帳戶。
在庫克群島，揭露信託委託人身分或提供委託人的任何資訊皆屬違法。
不過，華府「國際新聞記者調查聯盟」取得一批機密文件，約揭露了700個庫克信託帳戶開立人的身分。這些資料是記載全球離岸避稅天堂客戶資訊的250萬份文件的一部分。
紐約時報與國際新聞記者調查聯盟研究前述庫克群島資料後發現，庫克信託很受美國佛州棕櫚灘、紐約和好萊塢富人歡迎。委託人之中不乏因醫療補助詐欺，組織老鼠會或騙取員工退休金而被定罪者；另有許多人則純粹是錢多。
文件記載一個狄妮斯‧瑞奇開立的庫克信託帳戶。她是聲名掃地、在美國前總統柯林頓任內最後一天獲特赦的期貨商瑞奇的前妻。她信託的資產超過一億美元，包括48公尺長的遊艇「歡樂小姐」號，商務飛機「里爾噴射60」和一個瑞士銀行帳戶。
設立庫克信託帳戶毫無違法之處，把資產交付信託後仍須為資產收益繳稅。不過這些信託深受一些擔心吃官司的人喜愛：被病患控告醫療疏失的醫師、躲債的商人與遭聯邦政府控告的人。
史丹福因主導規模70億美元的老鼠會被判110年徒刑，正在服刑。他在庫克群島有一個「貝比媽媽信託」，以和他生下兩個孩子的情婦命名，情婦是受益人。「貝比媽媽」包含出售佛州一棟房子的250萬美元收入。
對庫克群島而言，信託生意就是搖錢樹。該國政府穩定，且有以英國普通法系為基礎的成熟司法體制。由信託衍生的業務包括註冊費、信託公司及其員工繳的稅和各種配套服務，合計占庫克群島經濟總值三億美元的8%多一點，在旅遊業之後，但超過漁業。
該國官員說，他們打算以對美國客戶的成功經驗為基礎，對中國與亞洲其他地區客戶推展信託。
萬一美國官員盯上庫克信託，新的亞洲客戶就能幫上庫克群島的忙，不過目前情勢尚未轉變。曾任職財政部的哈佛大學法學院稅務教授夏伊說：「華府看中的是大筆資金所在地，也就是跨國公司的避稅天堂。不過，當美國政府把資產從這些重要地點擠出來之後，就會有更多錢流向小一號或小兩號的區域，屆時就會拿庫克群島開刀。」
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