Cool-er device of the British Virgin Islands-registered company Interead, which has received a winding up order a month ago by the high court in Liverpool, UK, is still sold by companies Argos and Tesco. The businessman behind the company Neil Jones is running Coolerbooks.com, which sells e-books from the Cool-er and other electronic readers, but is owned by a separate company, registered in the British Virgin Islands and called Interead.com. This firm was put into liquidation on June 8, however, the companies Argos and Tesco are continuing to sell the device, and the customers are not informed about the problems in the firm.
According to Argos, they took a commercial decision to phase out this product range, because they no longer have active working relationship with this supplier and were unaware of the suggested recent developments in this business.
The Guardian claims that the founder of the BVI company Neil Jones has “told friends he is the firm’s biggest creditor, claiming to have put about $1m (£660,000) into the business”.
Also, Interead has not filed any accounts and is being wound up following an outstanding claim from public relations advisers.
According to Indian press, the person accused of the so called Satyam scam, B. Ramalinga Raju, had moved Rs 26 crore to around six companies in the British Virgin Islands. The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) that has found this has sent a rogatory letter to the BVI, and is now waiting a reply. One of CBI officials said that they are to find out why this money was sent to the offshore tax haven.
Upon getting a reply from the British Virgin Islands, CBI will decide on filing a chargesheet regarding fund diversion.
Two oil blocks in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), located on the border with Uganda , were sold to the companies registered in the British Virgin Islands and owned by relative of country’s president. The presidential decree, according to which the blocks were awarded to companies Caprikat and Foxwhelp, was published on June 22, 2010.
However, previously the DRC had signed contracts with two other companies to develop the blocks. After the contracts were awarded to the two new companies, one of the previous companies having contract with DRC, Tullow Oil, has not received presidential decree to begin exploration of its blocks and now is considering to start legal action.
Another company, Divine Inspiration Group (DIG), registered in South Africa, signed a competing contract for block 1 in 2008, and spent about US$4 million in signing bonuses and fees to secure the block. Andrea Brown, the executive director of DIG, said that “the developments with respect to the block 1 contract are not in line with principles of transparency and due process”. This company is going to appeal for compensation, looking forward to constructive engagement with the government on this matter.
The oil blocks have an estimated 2 billion barrels of reserves that have already been discovered. According to the DRC, exploration is to begin in the near future.
Jamoliddin Nuraliev, the Tajik government official and Son-In-Law of country’s president, has denied any ties to a British Virgin Islands-registered firm Innovative Road Solutions, which is operating the toll road on Dushanbe-Chanak highway, - one of the main roads in Tajikistan. According to Deputy Finance Minister Nuraliev, they are not providing any funds for BVI company’s activities in Tajikistan. He also said that a government commission recently audited the activities of the company and did not discover anything illegal about them.
At the same time, it is reported by media that Innovative Road Solutions was registered in the BVI by a person named Jamoliddin Nuraliev.
The head of Tajikistan’s Antimonopoly Committee Amonulloh Ashur, who had already questioned company’s right to operate the only toll road in the country, said that the most important thing is that the company did not coordinate its pricing policy with the Committee.
In the opinion of Tajik economists, company’s registration in the BVI makes it difficult to follow its activities. Also, for some reasons the company was exempted from paying more than a dozen different taxes.
Vancouver-based copper miner First Quantum Minerals Ltd. is planning to put the issue on one of the worst expropriations in the Canadian mining sector on the agenda to be discussed at the upcoming G20 summit. Its US$765mln Kolwezi Tailing project in the Democratic Republic of the Congo was sealed off, after the government of CDR claimed that there was violation of Congolese law. There was no explanation provided on this matter. Also other assets of the company in Congo, the Frontier and Lonshi mines, are now under threat.
Instead of negotiating the contract with the Canadian company, the Congolese government signed a joint-venture agreement that gave the rights on the Kolwezi project to the British Virgin Islands-incorporated Highwind Properties Ltd., which is actually not mining company. According to First Quantum president, they were aware of this fact, but they were not aware of the process that was conducted for awarding the contract, or of any tender involving the project.
Sources said that passing the rights to the BVI company is part of a “grab-and-flip” strategy by the government, in which the rights are later sold to a third party, and insiders get profit. Highwind is mentioned in connection with an Israeli businessman Dan Gertler, who conducts business in the Congo. He is famous for his top-level government ties, and is known to control a large number of companies.
First Quantum not only lost the project, it was also ordered to pay a US$12-billion fine by a DRC court. Investors now place almost no value on the company’s Congo assets. The Canadian company has taken the case to international arbitration court.