Allan Gray

The U. S. Government is seeking to seize the alleged proceeds of narcotics trafficking that are held in accounts at Barclays Bank, in London, England in the name of British Virgin Islands-registered Auxerre Corporation; St. Kitts and Nevis-based Crowne Gold Inc., which is secretly controlled by offshore provider Terry Neal, has been slammed by an Ontario, Canada-based client for allegedly not assisting in the recovery of nearly US$6,000 that the client claims was defrauded from his account by a third-party; U. S.-based Spherion Corporation, which specializes in staffing, recruiting and workforce management, filed a civil complaint against the Cayman Islands Department of Tourism at federal court in the USA on January 29, 2004. Three former insiders of a now-defunct, Grenada-licensed offshore bank have each received non-custodial sentences for their participation in an investment fraud; Meanwhile, two other former insiders with another Grenada-licensed offshore bank, Robert John Skirving and Paul James Peiffer, both of Oregon, have suffered setbacks in their attempts to have their debts wiped out via bankruptcy; Investors who lost millions of dollars in the failed Bahamas-registered Oracle Fund have reached a settlement with the Fund's administrator, reported the Bahama Journal on January 23, 2004; The number of foreign-owned legal entities registered in Bermuda fell by 2.5 per cent from 13,870 to 13,528 during 2003, according to figures recently released by the Registrar of Companies; For a company that claims to manage so much money - more than $2.5 billion - Bermuda-based Orbis Investment Management Ltd. has surprisingly little transparency; A company in which St. Vincent and the Grenadines-licensed offshore bank Omnicorp Bank invested was named as a defendant in a civil lawsuit filed by the SEC at the U. S. District Court for the District of Utah on February 23, 2004; and A participant in an offshore-oriented scam perpetrated by an organization doing business as the Global Prosperity Group or the Institute of Global Prosperity has pleaded guilty to tax evasion in the United States.

Last month, InsideBermuda promised to make further inquiries into the ownership of Bermuda-registered Orbis Investment Management Ltd. after its management had tried to block access to its share register. Readers may recall that, when OIML eventually allowed a member of the public to inspect its register, it showed that the majority shareholder was Orbis Holdings Ltd., with 499,996 of the 500,000 issued shares, with one each held by Geoffrey Gardner, William Gray, Allan Gray and James Dorr.

Many of us have heard variations of the old joke about how many attorneys, doctors, etc. it takes to change a light bulb. InsideBermuda has a new version: How many representatives of Bermuda-based Orbis Investment Management Ltd. does it take before they allow a member of the public to view their share register? Answer: One to take the inquiry, one to refuse it, one to give a ridiculous interpretation of the law, one to field an inquiry from an investigative journalist, one to field an inquiry from a regulator, and one to capitulate.