Secrecy for Sale
©2013 Center for Public Integrity
Germany
“if they can be proven to have participated in or incited to tax fraud”.
Gunter Sachs Millionaire author, photographer, industrialist and ex-husband of Brigitte Bardot Details: The famous Gunter Sachs is revealed to have had a vast and inscrutable wealth-hiding web, involving nominee directors, shell companies, and law firm trustees, to create multiple layers of secrecy in an already secret world. Offshore business: Sachs commissioned a private secretary to oversee his business dealings, who travelled to the Cook Islands to create two shell corporations, Triton Ltd. and another company called Tantris Ltd. The companies acted as trustees for five trusts set up between 1994 and 2007 – the Moon Crystal Trust, the Espan Water Trust, the Sequoia Trust, the Triton Trust and the Parkland Oak Trust. Sachs’s vast offshore web has been visualized here. Comment: Before he died, Sachs asserted he was being persecuted and the investigations stemmed from envy. Swiss fiscal law expert Andreas Kolb says the signing lawyers will face legal consequences over the inventory of Sachs’s estate,
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Greece Apostolos Vakakis Businessman Details: CEO of the retail conglomerate Jumbo SA, one of Greece’s largest companies. Offshore business: Shareholder of Karpathia Ltd. (2007) in the British Virgin Islands. Company transferred to another offshore service provider in 2009. Comment: “I have declared officially all without exception my transactions that should be announced in public, as provided by relevant Greek legislation. … One does not use a legal entity in order to hide the identity of the beneficial owner by using shadow names but to be able to complete a transaction in a straightforward manner,” said Vakakis.
India Ravikant Ruia Businessman Details: In December 2011, he was accused of criminal conspiracy by
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