Chairman of Etisalat Nigeria, Hakeem Belo-Osagie, has a portion of his wealth domicile in trusts and shell companies in some notorious tax havens around the world, with some in Jersey in the Channel Islands, Premium Times reports.
The reputable online newspaper said the Channel Islands are a tax haven and an archipelago in the English Channel, off the French Coast of Normandy.
Belo was listed by Forbes Magazine as the 41st richest man in Africa with a net worth of $600 million as at November 2014.
One of the tax-haven Trusts in Jersey is known as the Belo-Osagie Trust 2 which actually is a front office for a shell company called Clerkenwell Management Limited. The relationships between these two entities and other offshore subsidiaries are buried in complex layers of secrecy.
This information came to the fore as Premium Times continued to scrutinize the over 11 million Mossack Fonseca documents contained in the sleaze dossier now known worldwide as the Panama Papers.
Documents show that Clerkenwell Management Limited is “an entity 100% owned by the Belo-Osagie Trust 2 (the “Trust”)”.
However, Belo-Osagie is not listed as a trustee. The trustee of this Trust is a company named Chesham Limited which registered office is given as 13 Castle Street, St. Helier, Jersey JE4 5UT, Channel Islands. Chesham Limited was incorporated in Jersey on September 7, 2007, with registered number 98642.
It has as its directors Charles Guy Malet de Carteret, Christopher John Blunt, Hugh Duncan Cathcart, Simon Paul Alan Brewer and Wendy Joy Burnett. These people appear to be nominee directors.
In tax havens arrangement, nominee directors are usually used as fronts for beneficial owners of entities.
Belo-Osagie “of 21 Ikoyi Crescent, Ikoyi Lagos Island, Nigeria” is listed in the documents as the settlor of the Trust. The Etisalat chairman and his Ghanaian wife, Myma, are named as beneficiaries of the Trust.
But in a convoluted and confusing legal arrangement, the same documents which described the couple as “settlor” and “beneficiaries”, state that Belo-Osagie and his wife “are not direct owners and are members of a discretionary class of beneficiaries.
The ultimate controlling party is the Trustee (Chesham Limited).” That kind of arrangement and claim, Premium Times has found, are in line with offshore shell companies practices where things are never straightforward.
But further checks by this newspaper revealed that Chesham Limited is in turn 100 per cent owned by Sanne Fiduciary Services Limited. Sanne Fiduciary Services and Chesham Limited share the same land address of 13 Castle Street, St. Helier, Jersey JE4 5UT, Channel Islands.
Sanne Fiduciary is the trustee of yet another Trust known as the Belo-Osagie Purpose Trust. This Trust was established by Belo-Osagie on November 6, 2007, exactly two months after Chesham Limited was incorporated. The initial property for the entity was provided by Belo-Osagie.
The offshore sister companies are Airport Square Trust in Jersey and Tamerlaine Limited in British Virgin Island.
These companies, working with Belo-Osagie Purpose Trust, have business activities such as “Investment in Ghana Airport City Development Limited.” Myma Belo-Osagie is the beneficial owner of Tamerlaine.
If the legal documentations appear a jigsaw puzzle, one piece of paper graciously serves as the smoking gun. On the source of funds transferred to the Trust, the document unequivocally stated that “All funds settled into the Trust originated from Belo-Osagie.”
The document went further to clarify that:
The nature of consultancy undertaken by the businessman was not indicated.
The document, however, added, “The shares in the bank were subsequently sold at a substantial profit through Afrinvest, an FSA regulated broker based in the UK. These funds make up the bulk of wealth transferred to the Trust.”
Tax authorities the world over view Liechtenstein with a certain level of notoriety and suspicion.
The Liechtenstein structure or Liechtenstein-based arrangements are generally marketed to wealthy individuals to avoid or evade tax obligations in their home countries.
The promoter may provide a paper trail of documents that leads nowhere as the documents do not reflect the substance of transactions and the owner’s interest or involvement in the structure.
It was gathered that a special-purpose fund is separate from the assets of its founder and forms the assets of the Trust or Foundation from then on; as such, the owner does not pay tax on them.
A Liechtenstein structure has no members, partners or shareholders. The owner directly or indirectly transfers assets to the structure. The assets may include cash and investments in term of deposits, bonds or equities, which may themselves consist of undisclosed income or gains from another country.
The structure then uses the assets to generate passive income, which is retained by the structure. The owner and/or his associates ultimately reap the economic benefits from the structure, often in a disguised form. The structure may be used as a holding company for other entities in which the owner has interests.
Belo-Osagie’s father, Professor Sunmonu Belo-Osagie, was the gynaecologist to the family of former Nigerian military president, Ibrahim Babangida.
His family’s connections with the military in the 1980s was a springboard for his appointments as a Special Assistant to the Presidential Adviser on Petroleum and Energy and later as Special Assistant to the Minister of Petroleum and Energy, positions he admitted in interviews opened for him his first road to fortune.
