The Long Read: Offshores take two local NHS trusts for a ride
Two local NHS trusts are being taken for a ride. D.R.C. Locums Ltd & Maxxima Ltd are recruitment companies who provide staff to keep our local NHS services working, and sometimes at great expense to the public purse. These two companies have received in excess of £12 million, much of it ending up in tax havens, such as the Cayman Islands, Liechtenstein, Hong Kong, New Zealand and the Netherlands.
Kent Community Health NHS Foundation Trust (KCHFT) began payment to D.R.C. Locums Ltd back in May 2015. According to KCHFT spend data they have spent in excess of £10 million pounds with D.R.C Locums between May 2015 and Jan 2019. But it is not just KCHFT who have made payments to D.R.C. Locums Ltd, East Kent Hospital University Foundation Trust have as well and can be found in their spend data.
Spend on D.R.C Locums by KCHFT for 2016 = £7.9 million
D.R.C. Locums specialise in in the supply of temporary, permanent and international nurses, mental health practitioners and doctors. “Honesty is the key to our approach…” they make clear on their website.
D.R.C Locums Ltd is ultimately owned by Syndicated Investor Group Limited who have addresses in Hong Kong since 23rd May 2005 but are head-quartered in Lichtenstein for tax purposes.
Syndicated Investor Group Limited is in the Panama Papers once and the Paradise Papers once. The Panama Papers were given to the world in April 2016 and D.R.C. Locum Ltd have received payments from KCHFT from May 2015 according to their payment to suppliers data, still publicly available.
Did representatives of KCHFT or EKHUFT undertake any due diligence on the ownership of D.R.C. Locums Limited?
As of May 2015, KCHFT were paying D.R.C Locum Ltd for locum nurses and doctors, and from 2016 for EKHUFT. D.R.C Locums Ltd owners, Syndicated Investor Group Limited had two shareholders. These were:
The Anstalt (Establishment) is a legal form, which is not known in any other jurisdiction apart from Liechtenstein – a known offshore tax haven, which does not disclose the beneficial owners names.
Liechtenstein is on the EU watch list of tax havens
An Anstalt is a hybrid between a company limited by shares and a foundation. An Anstalt is an entity, which has no members, participants or shareholders. It differs from a company in that it has no duty to return profit and differs from a trust in that it has no obligation to a beneficiary. Anstalt do have, however, a holder of the founder’s rights. The founder can be either a legal person or a natural person, need not be resident in the host country and Anstalt must have a minimum capital of USD 33, 800. There is also no need for the founder identity to be notified to the registration office – made public. Also an Anstalt can have nominee directors and a nominee shareholder.There are two types of Anstalt; commercial and non-commercial, and they feature prominently in the finance system of Liechtenstein.
Now these two companies give their addresses as Heiligkreuz 6; LI-9490 Vaduz; Liechtenstein. This address is named in the Panama Papers not once, but twice.
This address is the home of Marxer & Partner – The Oldest and Largest Law Firm in the Principality of Liechtenstein which for those of you who do not know is an offshore tax haven. Tax evasion is not a criminal offence in Liechtenstein.
The two companies behind Syndicated Investor Group Limited, Quorom Anstalt, and Fundationsanstalt cannot and must not by law release any public data on the person/s who own them.
So how could any due diligence discover the ownership of these companies? In short they could not.
Now as far as we can tell Syndicated Investor Group Limited has had two different registered addresses in Hong Kong – also considered to be a tax haven, they are:
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Room 906, 9/F Ocean Centre, Harbour City 5 Canton Road, Tsim Sha Tsui, Kowloon, Hong Kong
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2nd Floor, Queen Centre, 60 Queens Road East, Wan Chai , Hong Kong
Now Syndicated Investor Group Limited has 100 shares in CBG Trustee Company Limited
The directors of CBG at the time of the D.r.c. Locum Ltd contract starting in late 2016 were:
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Dennis Raymond CHURCH, director, 4 Jun 2010- 6 Mar 2017
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Robert Leslie SMITH, director, 7 Feb 2014-22 Dec 2018
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Simeon John WRIGHT, director, 14 Apr 2015- 7 Apr 2017
Current Directors
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Angela Marie DIXON, director, 10 Jan 2018-
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John Edmund ROSS, director, 1 Feb 2017-
As the Shepwayvox Team rightly say, there are probably more than two and no doubt this is a nationwide phenomena. For what it is worth, if you can know the ultimate beneficial owner of the offshore, then by all means allow these guys and girls to do business with the NHS. If you can’t, then no way Jose. And it does make you wonder how good their due diligence is.