Jurisdictions to avoid - The Cook Islands

By: Roberto Bell

The Cook Islands is another example of a has been jurisdiction that over time has compromised their secrecy and privacy laws to make the jurisdiction no longer a valid offshore jurisdiction.

Cook Islands Mutual Legal Assistance - The Cook Islands allows for mutual legal assistance with any country by the other country making a written request for the information by letter. If the information is based on an offense in the other country that if it had been committed in the Cook Islands would have led to a jail sentence of 12 months or a fine of $5000 the information will be provided. It would not take much to get a $5000 fine. We are not talking about cooperation on only major crimes. The interpretation of the information request is subject to the Attorney General of the Cook Islands. Such information requests can be granted on purely taxation matters and includes acts or omissions. It would also appear that if you received funds or sent funds to an entity that was guilty of something and being investigated in some country and this country could request your records because your name or your corporation, trust etc came up in the investigation of some other entity that may have done something wrong. This is a fishing expedition and safeguards against this sort of practice do not seem to be in place at all in the Cook Islands. Once your records are in the hands of another government no matter whom this government may be, this government may insert your records into another court file or somehow get it into the public domain for the world to see. This is not a jurisdiction one would want to rely on for privacy or asset protection.

Cook Islands Corporation - The Cook Islands does have bearer share corporations but the bearer share certificates must be held by an approved custodian in the Cook Islands. This means the shares need to be made out to someone. Transfers of the shares would involve reportage and identifying the new owner. This sort of defeats the purpose of the bearer shares since the anonymity is gone. The Cook Islands also has a requirement to keep accounting records for corporations.

Cook Islands Trusts - The Cook Islands jurisdiction is known for having strong Trust laws. Granted the record keeping requirements for Cook Island Corporations does not apply to the Cook Island Trusts but the lack of adequate privacy protection would serve to negate the trusts from this jurisdiction as well. If the records are easy to get then problems can result.

Cook Islands Bank Accounts- We are not aware of any solid banks in the Cook Islands. There were only two local banks there last time we checked. The Cook Islands does have bank secrecy but it is subject to piercing by the Attorney General at the request of any country.

Article Source: EZINEPRIME - FREE WEB CONTENT and ARTICLES

Smythe Bradley is an expat living in The Republic of Panama. He has published many articles on offshore asset protection in panama, panama visas and residency, as well as many other expat issues.

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