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Panama Papers: Wale Tinubu Operated 12 Shell Companies In Tax Havens / Panamapapers: How Tinubu Operated 12 Shell Companies In Tax Havens / Panama Papers: Dangote And Sayyu Dantata Linked To Shell Companies In Tax Havens (2) (3) (4)
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#panamapapers: Dangote, Linked To Shell Companies In Tax Havens. by judondasylva(m): 2:20pm On Apr 08, 2016 |
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ith a staggering $15.4 billion wealth,
Nigeria’s businessman and industrialist,
Aliko Dangote, is on Forbes Rich List as
the richest man in Africa. But does Mr. Dangote
pay his fair share of tax in Nigeria or is he hiding
assets abroad? That remains unclear. Yet that
question has become even more relevant across
the globe following discoveries of several secret
shell companies linked to the businessman, his
allies and relatives.
Aliko Dangote
According to internal data of the Panama-based
offshore-provider, Mossack Fonseca, obtained by
the German newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung and
shared by the International Consortium of
Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) with PREMIUM
TIMES and over 100 other media partners in 82
countries, Mr. Dangote, his relative, Sayyu
Dantata, as well as his business allies have over
the years used shell companies domiciled in
controversial tax havens in their business
transactions.
Mr. Dangote and the game of shares
Mr. Dangote is one of the most prominent clients
of Mossack Fonseca, and in Panama alone,
based on company registration addresses
provided by shareholders, 13 shell companies
registered by the firm are directly linked to
persons and companies who in turn are linked to
the billionaire and his allies.
Mr. Dangote, alongside his half brother, Sayyu
Dantata, the founder of MRS Holdings (a leading
West African oil-marketing firm, which acquired
Chevron-Texaco’s downstream assets in 2007)
bought equal shares of 12,500 each from OVLAS
S.A, a shell company registered in Seycheles, on
October 6, 2003.
Seychelles is a well-known tax haven used by
businessmen and politicians and celebrities to
perpetrate shady business deals. On the same
date also, a company they both own as at 2003,
MRS Oil and Gas Co. Limited bought 25,000
numbers of shares from OVLAS S.A.
According to the documents, three years after
they existed as shareholders of the company, the
trio – Dangote, Dantata and M.R.S Oil and Gas
Company Limited – ceased to be shareholder in
the company. That was on April 12, 2006.
But in an arrangement that seems curious, Mr.
Dangote was issued a higher amount of shares –
250,000 – on the same day he resigned.
In the same manner, his brother, Mr. Dantata,
was issued the same amount of 250,000 shares.
That means the businessmen simply resold the
shares back to themselves. Their company, MRS
Oil and Gas, was re-issued 500,000 shares.
After three years of holding the shares, they all
ceased to be shareholders. Again, they resumed
possession of the shares again as in the previous
time, but this time it seems Mr. Dangote sold his
shares to Mr. Dantata and M.R.S Oil and Gas
Company Limited.
Mr. Dangote ceased to be shareholder
permanently on July 6, 2009, and Mr. Dantata’s
amount of shares doubled to 500,000 shares
while MRS Oil and Gas CO, LTD retained its
500,000 shares. Documents show Mr. Danatata
never sold, transferred his shares or ceased to
be a shareholder till date.
Petrowest S.A: Same folks, same tricks
Before Mr. Dangote ceased to be shareholder of
M.R.S Oil and Gas Limited, himself, Mr. Dantata
and their co-owned company, M.R.S Oil and Gas
Co. Limited, was used to buy shares in
Petrowest S.A, another company registered in
Seychelles on October 6, 2003.
Messrs Dangote and Dantata bought equal
shares of 12,500 each from Petrowest S.A. MRS
Oil and Gas Co. Ltd also bought 25,000 numbers
of shares from Petrowest, just as was done with
OVLAS S.A.
Again, three years after they existed as
shareholders, the trio – Dangote, Dantata and
M.R.S Oil and Gas Company Limited ceased to
be shareholders in the company. That was also
dated April 12, 2006.
Like in the case of Ovlas S.A, Mr. Dangote
suddenly ceased to be shareholder. According to
documents available to PREMIUM TIMES, on the
same day, Mr. Dangote was re-issued a higher
amount of shares – 250,000. In the same
manner, his brother, Mr. Dantata, was issued the
same amount of 250,000 shares. This literary
means they resold the shares back to
themselves. Their company MRS Oil and Gas
was re-issued 500,000 shares.
Shady Petrowest and Ovlas name swap in
Seychelles
In what appears a plot to blur the trace to the
Ovlas in Seychelles, the shareholders quickly filed
for a change of name to Petrowest S.A.
A document seen by PREMIUM TIMES, reads
“Republic of Seychelles, INTERNATIONAL
BUSINESS COMPANIES ACT, 1994…Company No:
018606…
This is to certify that OVLAS SA. has changed its
name and is now incorporated under the name of
PETROWEST S.A. on this 27‘” day of April 2011.
Given at Victoria, Seychelles.”
Differrent story with Petrowest S.A and Ovlas
S.A in Panama
In a separate document, it was shown that while
Petrowest swallowed Ovlas S.A in Seychelles in
2011, courtesy of the name change, Petrowest
S.A Panama only bought 100 units of shares at
$100 each from Ovlas to become shareholder in
the company. That happened on October 12,
2012.
A web of intrigues, companies within companies
Specifically, Messrs. Dantata, Anil Kumar
Ahluwalia and M.R.S Investments Company
share same company address – Plot 6, Block 2,
Osborne Road, Ikoyi, Lagos Island – in entities
incorporated for them offshore by Mossack
Fonseca.
The M.R.S Investments Companies mentioned
earlier is a subsidiary of MRS Holdings.
Anil Kumar Ahluwalia, whose company name is
Santosh Investment Limited S.A is connected to
a Panama shell company called Lotus Trust
Services Sarl.
Similarly, MRS Investments Company Limited is
a shareholder company to Chalmers Shipping
Incorporation, which in turn is directly connected
to another shell company named Afrex Sal, also
domicilled in Panama.
Afrex Sal is a client company for Mr Dantata and
Dangote’s Ovlas Trading based in Monaco
France. Ovlas Trading is co-owned by Sayyu
Dantata and Patrice Alberti in the name of Ovlas
Trading S.A., for 75 shares with a par value of
US$ 100,00 each; and in the name of Karbelina
Investments LLC, for 25 shares with a par value
of USS 100,00 each.
Messrs Dangote and Dantata have allegedly used
their multiple companies in Nigeria and other
countries to secure huge loans. For instance in
2010, the management of Bank PHB, a Nigerian
bank, dragged M.R.S Holdings Limited, owned by
Mr. Dantata, to court over the non- payment of
Fifty-Eight million dollars ($USD 58M) loan the
bank granted it to purchase Chevron Texaco in
2008.
In a similar development in September 2014,
Sani Dangote, younger brother to Mr. Dangote,
was dragged before a Federal High Court in
Lagos over his alleged failure to liquidate about
N5 billion loan granted him by Union Bank.
In its suit, Union Bank alleged that in a bid to
evade payment of the loan, Sani Dangote made
efforts to deplete funds in his accounts by
diverting them to Dubai, Canada and
Switzerland.
A dark corridor
Shell companies constitute some of the darkest,
sometimes convoluted, corridors in global illicit
finance. Shell companies are usually domiciled in
notorious tax havens like Cayman Island,
Monaco, Panama, Samoa, Switzerland,
Luxembourg, Hong Kong, Singapore, Lebanon,
Mauritius, British Virgin Islands, St. Lucia, Belize,
Macao and close to a hundred others; usually
tiny countries.
Owners create Shell companies for a host of
dodgy business reasons. Some people own shell
companies so that when they acquire assets like
private jets and real estates, governments do not
find out to demand tax. Some others set up shell
companies to raise funds before starting
operations, to attempt a takeover or as a front
for an illegal business. The purpose (s) for which
Mr. Dangote and his allies set up their own
secret companies is not exactly clear. But shell
companies are not illegal, and not all owners use
them to avoid tax or hide assets.
However shell companies are at times used for
tax avoidance. This they do through Transfer
Pricing, a complex structure that allows
businesses often in Third World countries to shift
profits to shell companies overseas to allow
them pay little or no tax in the country where
they made the money.
Evidence abounds in the data that the
Panamanian company, Mossack Fonseca, offers
clients aggressive “reinvoicing” services that are
specifically designed to help companies avoid/
evade taxes. It remains unclear whether Mr.
Dangote and his associates used their shell
companies to buy any such service from
Fonseca. Many people using offshore companies
do so legally and offshore companies indeed
have many legal purposes.
More actors uncovered
Using data-mining techniques and working in
collaboration with a global network of
investigators with access to secret databases,
PREMIUM TIMES was able to uncover several
Nigerian business players associated with shell
companies.
Among them are Sayyu Dantata, Aisha Dantata
and Mariya Dantata who are listed as
shareholders of Koggi Shipping Incorporation
with registered location as Plot 688, No 4
Winnipeg Close Street, Maitama, Abuja, Nigeria.
Mariya Dantata also has a registered location at
Plot 70, Sharada Industrial Area, Phase 3, Kano,
Nigeria.
In addition, Sayyu Dantata owns a total of 25
million units of shares in Corlay Global S.A, a
company that is a client to Afrex Sal and also
located at Plot 70, Sharada Industrial Area,
Phase 3 Kano, Nigeria.
A few other other allies of Messrs Dangote and
Dantata were also flagged as shareholders in the
shell companies used for their Panama deals.
They include Ola Rosiji, a shareholder of
Excalibur Holdings Services Incorporation; and
Alex-Duduyemi Oyekunle, a traditional chief
known as the Aro of Ife Kingdom.
Mr. Oyekunle is a shareholder of Sunnigdale
Assets, S.A, a company that also shares same
registered location with MRS Holdings Limited at
Plot 70 Sharada Industrial Area, Phase 3 Kano,
Nigeria.
MRS Holding particularly popped up regularly as
multiple shareholder company for other
companies linked to Messrs Dangote and
Dantata in Panama.
Corlay Global S.A. and SID Holdings Group are
among other companies owned by MRS Holdings
and Dantata. They are Afrex S.A clients in
Panama.
It is a similar story in Seychelles, an archipelago
of 115 islands in the Indian Ocean off East
Africa, where Afrex S.A and Bulldog Global
Financial Services LLP act as client for Mr.
Dangote and Dantata’s companies. Documents
show that Sayyu Dantata owns 250,000, 125,000
and 50,000 share units in PetroWest S.A., Paseo
Trading Limited, and Arkinton International
Limited respectively.
Other business allies who are shareholders in
companies located at Plot 70 Sahrada Industrial
Area, Phase 3, Kano, Nigeria, include Ayokunu
Tajudeen Sowemimo and Arjun Thadani.
Mr. Arjun Thadani controls 2,500 units of shares
in Mitarj International Corporation, a client
company to USA Corporate Services Incorporated
(New York), which also operates from
Seychelles.
On his part, Mr. Sowemimo owns 15,000 share
units in Capital Development Solutions Limited
which is a client company to Orion House
Services (HK) Limited operating in Samoa.
Samoa is one of the various countries used as
tax havens by large corporations.
Dangote and a business of secrecy
A 2015 investigation by PREMIUM TIMES, in
partnership with French Daily, Le Monde , the
International Consortium of Investigative
Journalists, and a host of other major media
organisations around the world, had named Mr.
Dangote among some of Nigeria’s wealthiest
industrialists, former government officials and
their relatives, who operated highly secretive
foreign accounts with the Swiss branch of
banking giant, HSBC.
Some of those named in that global investigation
were found to have concealed their identities for
years and using codes perhaps to shake off tax
authorities from accounts, some of which held
illicit assets from criminals, traffickers, arms
dealers and other outlaws.
That investigation, published in February last
year showed how HSBC profited doing business
with people who stole from their countries and
some of the world’s most notorious con artists,
including people who made a fortune fuelling
wars in Africa.
The bank helped questionable characters conceal
their wealth despite knowing their sources, and
devised ways to hide the identities of the owners
of the secret accounts from governments around
the world.
Dangote web of companies
At least 100,000 secret bank account operators
who owned about $100 billion were exposed in
the leaks, unsettling investigators in several
countries.
Among those accounts were that of Mr. Dangote,
who became an HSBC private account client in
July 2003. The account appeared in the name of
Development Projects Corporation, its registration
address in Tortola, in the British Virgin Islands, a
notorious tax haven, where individuals and
corporations usually incorporate shell companies
to hide assets. Mr. Dangote’s account was in
operation till August 2004.
It is not clear to what use Mr. Dangote put the
account and perhaps because he closed it long
before the data were stolen, bank records did not
indicate any balance on the account.
Our hands are clean – Dangote Group
Despite several documents linking Mr. Dangote
to those offshore companies, the businessman’s
spokesperson insisted he never had any
relationship with the offshore entities.
The spokesperson for the Dangote Group, Tony
Chiejina, in response to enquiry by PREMIUM
TIMES, said, “Thank you for your enquiry
concerning our alleged relationship with the
following off shore companies namely: Paseo
Trading Ltd, Seychelles; Petrowest S.A.,
Seychelles; SID Holdings Corp, Panama and
Chalmers Shipping Inc, Panama.
“I wish to state categorically that neither Aliko
Dangote nor Dangote Industries Ltd (DIL) has
any form of relationship with these alleged four
off shore companies. The Group has four quoted
companies on the Nigerian Stock Exchange and
we cannot afford to tarnish our reputation or
conduct our business in an unethical manner
given this profile.
“Our reputation is paramount to us and we are
conscious of the downside of it. We thank you
for upholding the principal ethics in journalism –
‘when in doubt, check’.
Mr. Dantata could not be reached. The contact
numbers listed on MRS Holdings website failed
to connect the several times our reporter called.
We’re not liable for crimes by companies we
register
Mossack Fonseca, the company behind the
registration of the shell companies, said it does
not direct the companies it incorporates for its
clients and therefore cannot be held liable for the
uses to which the firms are put.
“Filing legal paperwork to help incorporate a
company is a very different thing from
establishing a business link with or directing in
any way the companies so formed,” Carlos
Sousa, the company’s public relations director,
said in a statement to ICIJ.
“We only incorporate companies, which just
about everyone acknowledges is important, and
something that’s critical in ensuring the global
economy functions efficiently. In providing those
services, we follow both the letter and spirit of
the law.
“Because we do, we have not once in nearly 40
years of operation been charged with criminal
wrongdoing. We’re proud of the work we do,
notwithstanding recent and willful attempts by
some to mischaracterize it.”
The African Network of African Reporting Centres
(ANCIR) contributed reporting for this story. |
Re: #panamapapers: Dangote, Linked To Shell Companies In Tax Havens. by sammyj: 2:44pm On Apr 08, 2016 |
Hmmmmmm!!! Food for thoughts !!!! |
Re: #panamapapers: Dangote, Linked To Shell Companies In Tax Havens. by dominique(f): 2:48pm On Apr 08, 2016 |
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