"We share your determination! The creation of RiverOak Strategic Partners meets our long held commitment to have a UK operating company. Our investors are represented on the RSP board by Nick Rothwell, Rico Sykes and Gerard Heusler. M.I.O Investments Limited has been established by our investors as a specific funding vehicle for their financial interests in the Manston project, which is standard practice. M.I.O Investments Limited is a company registered in the Commonwealth territory of Belize.
We have provided all required details of our company ownership structure to Companies House and also informed the Planning Inspectorate of the creation of RSP. Additional, comprehensive details of our funding partners and investment arrangements will be provided to PINS as part of the DCO application, providing solid evidence of our ability to meet all of the financial obligations associated with the acquisition, reopening and operation of the airport"
So why Belize?
Belize offers a high degree of privacy. Belize will not disclose its banking or fiscal information to any foreign party.
No tax at all
No reporting requirements.
Well, Well, Well who owns MIO? Who knows.
What do governments say about Belize as a tax haven?
What do TDC say about this? Well Chris Wells replied to an email by Andy McCulloch as follows:
On 30 Mar 2017, at 19:02, Andrew McCulloch wrote:
In view of the attached are you still willing to go along with the fiction that the DCO is unfunded and that RSP have no money?
Andrew McCulloch
Dear Andrew
I understand Belize is one of 14 Caribbean nations named by the US as “major money laundering” countries in the 2016 International Narcotics Control Strategy Report (INCSR) released by the US State Department.
According to the report, a major money laundering country is defined as one “whose financial institutions engage in currency transactions involving significant amounts of proceeds from international narcotics trafficking”.
The report notes that Belize is not a major regional financial center but has a substantial offshore financial sector. It also notes that Belize is a transshipment point for marijuana and cocaine, and states that human trafficking is also a concern for the country.”
What else would you like us to note?
Regards
Chris Wells
Further from the press release
comprehensive details of our funding partners and investment arrangements will be provided to PINS as part of the DCO application
Logically this is difficult to understand because shrouding the ownership of RSP Ltd in Belize secrecy doesn't make sense if at the same time you are providing "comprehensive details of our funding partners" to the Planning Authorities.
Freudmann will come unstuck again with this move and could very well end up with one in the nut.
ReplyDeleteFor years we have been told how RiverOak are fully committed to reopening Manston, and have been told that they would be providing funding for the project. Now, we find out that RiverOak abandoned the project in December. Mr. Freudmann has set up a new company but has used the word RiverOak in the company name to make it look like it has something to do with the original company. Now, we are told that some Swiss financiers are arranging the finance for the new project, but we aren't told where the money is coming from. It's as clear as mud. TDC made a massive mistake when they involved themselves with an offshore company which was supposed to develop the Pleasurama site. To this day the plot remains a building site and nobody has any idea when the people of Ramsgate will get their seafront back. Let's hope local politicians have the sense to see that a DCO funded by secret investors, channelling money through an offshore tax-haven, is another accident waiting to happen. It sounds as though Chris Wells is wise to the dangers of getting tangled up with such an obtuse scheme. Let's hope he can persuade his council colleagues to stick with the more straightforward and transparent scheme being proposed by the owners of Stone Hill Park.
ReplyDeleteAnon try telling that to SMAa. They are so blinkered in their thinking
ReplyDeleteAnon 22:47,very well put indeed the only remaining problem is the politicians/Gale and his sidekick who really want Tony Freudmann to get a grip on the plot and not so Gale can see a spitefire land,land being the cash ow intrest with all involved.
ReplyDeleteRiveroak is a mess and SHP the same: Discovery Park was sold a few weeks ago. So that leaves Colin Hill/BVI at Pleasurama or anyone with $1 to put something around the Parkway rail station with KCC/TDC?
ReplyDeleteTony Freudmann seems to have OCD. He is akin to a stalker pestering Manston "You will be mine". And Gale is like a peeping tom. "Anything to see yet Tony?"
ReplyDeleteNothing yet Roger,it takes time to nick this one,don't worrie Roger you'll get your drink when I get the plot with the help of my newish under the table mates.
DeleteI doubt he'll be nicked in Kent. But his constituency activity is before one National Crime Agency Inquiry and two judge led inquiries.
DeleteI see your mate Adam Mehmet has strong views on why a company in Belize is being used.......I can't believe people think there will be tax paid in the UK. This is how these structures work. The funding is raised by the company in Belize and lent to the company in the UK. Interest on the debt at a very high rate is paid by the UK company to the company in Belize. The UK company will then either make no profit or even perhaps a loss that it can carry forward and use in future years although it's unlikely that the UK company will ever make any profit after it pays interest to the company in Belize. Nothing illegal here just a structure that any use to reduce UK tax to zero. The issue for the rest of us in the UK is that as these companies pay no tax, we all have to pay more or let the NHS, Schools etc go to pot. If RSP are going to use a government sponsored DCO process they should not be allowed to use a Belize structure to reduce UK tax. In fact no companies that operate in the UK should be able to do this sort of thing. I've asked RSP to confirm that the Belize company isn't being used as I've described but no response. Likewise from Gale, Macinlay and Tyrie, no response.
ReplyDeleteHe isn't any mate of mine but I concur with his views
DeleteTDC duty to make environmental hazard information public and electronically available
ReplyDeleteMichael Child Thanet Online has done some good work on airborne particulate hazard.
ReplyDeleteBut it seems to me that Michael misses two factors
(a) The duty of TDC to inform the public of environmental hazard to health. In particular the history of water supply contamination.
(b) The mandatory application of precautionary principle. The particulate hazard, Michael calculates, would not occur in isolation. It would occur on top of and aggravating earlier environmental threat to health. In Thanet an area already exhibiting the highest lung disease/damage rates in UK
Who is Andrew McCulloch
ReplyDelete