Cook Islands Trust Business Grows

LawFuel.co.nz - The Law News Site - The Cook Islands is on the trust comeback trail looking for work from New Zealand, Australia and China as it produces newproducts and services focused on its reputation as a trust, rather than a tax haven.

New laws relating to captive insurance products and private foundations are the standard-bearers for a country that wasonce black-listed by the OECD for its involvement in tax-driven trust deals.

The Cooks' relatively new Financial Services Development Authority, set up to develop new products and services for the islands' half dozen trust companies, is focused on developing new business, but has no interest in providing tax-focused trust work says the FSDA's CEO, Jennifer Davis.

"Things may have been tax-driven earlier,but now the loopholes are closed," she told LawFuel. But even if they were not, the Cookshave no interest in developing tax-driven trust work.

The infamous winebox affair involving former merchant bank Fay Richwhite andothers and brought to the public's notice by MP Winston Peters, was something driven out of New Zealand's tax law rather thananything dreamed up by Cook Islands trust personnel, she said.

The long-running winebox enquiry and political and economic ramifications of it were widespread, including the blacklisting of theCook Islands by the OECD, a list that saw the Cooks emerge in 2003/04. They have no intention of going back to the bad old, taxdays."Our focus is Asia and also NZ and Australia because its a new, diversificationi for new client markets and services," Ms Davis said.

A US-trained lawyer with a bachelor of science from Cornell and an MBA from Notre Dame and a Juris Doctor from Fordham, Ms Davis iswell experienced in trust and business law internationally.

Read the rest of the story at LawFuel - http://www.lawfuel.co.nz/news/1024/cook-islands-on-the-comeback-trail

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Cook Islands Trust Business Grows