再Trust1/2, November 9th 2013 P64 (信託と基金)
When Mark Morris, a Zurich-based tax consultant with a conscience, requested a meeting with the European Commission to explain the many devious ways in which tax evaders were using shell companies and other vehicles, a bored official offered 20 minutes. ゛Once I started describing all the loopholes,゛Mr Morris recalls, ゛his eyes lit up. Two hours later he was still listening, scribbling furiously.゛ Only a fool holds dirty money in his own name these days. Anyone in the know tries to conceal ownership through labyrinthine combinations of anonymous shell companies and arrangements such as trusts and foundations. Campaigners have worked hard to expose the extent of this ゛layering゛, helping to push corporate transparency up the political agendas. G8 countries backed mandatory registration of real, or ゛beneficial゛, owners at their summit in Northern Ireland in June. Now Britain has become the first country to announce that its register would be open to the public. The misuse of trust, foundations and the like has drawn less interest - though some view such vehicles as a vault-sized loophole. John Christensen of the Tax Justice Network, a pressure group, terms them ゛one of the biggest nuts yet to be cracked.゛ A trust typically involves three main parties：a settlor (who donates the assets), a trustee (who manages the arrangement) and beneficiaries (who are to receive the funds in future). Confusingly, ownership is split：the trustee is the legal owner, while the beneficiaries or the settlor, or both, can at different times exercise beneficial ownership or control who gets the money. A common-law concept, the trust plays a big role in Britain's offshore satellites, especially Jersey, a small island with 4,500 trust professionals. In continantal Europe and jurisdictions such as Panama, foundations and anstalts serves a similar purposes. These arrangements can be wholly legitimate： ring-fencing a company's pension assets in the event of a takeover, for example. For minimising tax, corporate structures are generally more useful. Moreover, notes George Hodgson of the Society of Trust and Estate Practitioners：゛Trustees must know the full details of the beneficial owners and typically must pass that information on to competent authorities when requested.゛It is in trustees' interest to ensure tax is paid, he adds, because they are personally liable if it isn't. That is true in some countries,at least in theory. But fuzziness about ownership and endemic secrecy - in many jurisdictions trusts are not obliged even to register their existance, let alone their owners - make them a tempting tool for those trying to hide money or circumvent laws. A report in 2011 by the Stolen Asset Recovery Initiative, a joint UN/World Bank project, noted that trusts crop up less commonly than shell companies in corruption investigations. But it suggested that their misuse might be underreported, because trusts often baffle investigators, who instead focus on other targets. So-called discretionary trusts are particularly open to abuse. Their assets sit in a kind of ownerless limbo：given away, legally speaking, but without a recipient, so long as the beneficiaries are not defined. (They may even be children or grandchildren as yet unborm.) Trustees can be guided by a ゛letter of wishes゛, which may allow the settlor to control assets even though legally they do not belong to him. Such trusts are an ゛important and tricky゛issue for tax authorities, says Konstantin Lozev, a European Commission official.
