Hong Kong-based financial consultant Yoshimitsu Sasago is unsettled by developments since the recent leak of client data from a Panama-based law firm.
Sasago has served Japan-based clients in Hong Kong for the past 10 years. Sometimes they ask him to provide a perfectly legal but somewhat tricky service: to help set up a very small ¡ª apparently shell ¡ª company in an offshore tax haven such as the Cayman Islands or British Virgin Islands, and then to open an account for that company at a major bank in Hong Kong.
¡°No information is disclosed, so no one can tell which company is owned by whom at all. That¡¯s the juiciest part of a tax haven firm,¡± Sasago told The Japan Times by phone.
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