GAO does not list Aruba as tax-paradise

April 22, 2010 6:54 AM

ORANJESTAD/THE HAGUE — The ‘Defense Contracting’ report of the US Government Accountability Office (GAO) published last January, does not mention Aruba as a tax-paradise for American defense companies at all.

The Dutch Minister of Finances, Jan Kees de Jager (CDA) states the aforementioned in answer to questions from the PvdA Chamber-members Paul Tang, Angelien Eijsink and John Leerdam.

The Dutch government does not wish to confirm if and how many American defense companies have accommodation addresses on Aruba and the Netherlands Antilles, through which they channel tax revenues. “As both the Netherlands Antilles and Aruba are fiscally self-governing, it is not up to me to provide an overview of the subsidiary companies or accommodation addresses possibly established on the Netherlands Antilles and/or Aruba, of American companies with a contract with the American Ministry of Defense.”

Nevertheless, in his written response, De Jager mentions that upon inquiry with GAO it appeared the participations of defense-multinationals such as Lockheed-Martin and General Dynamics on Aruba all have the same parent company, namely an oil production company who had concluded contracts in 2009 worth more than one billion dollars with the American Ministry of Defense. De Jager does not mention the name of the oil company in question. For that matter, this does not mean that the revenues from these participations in Aruba were used for contracts with the American Ministry of Defense, according to the Minister. “This information has not been investigated by the GAO, or available to public.”

It further appears that none of the 29 investigated defense companies had participation on Aruba in 2003. “However, in 2008 it appeared that the aforementioned oil production company had five Aruban participations. The report therefore mentions Aruba as one of the jurisdictions with the highest growth in participations – in terms of percentage.” In that same paragraph of the report, one nevertheless indicates that – in absolute numbers – the United Kingdom and Canada had registered the largest growth in participation of the investigated companies.

From the report ‘Defense Contracting’ of the US Government Accountability Office (GAO) it supposedly appears that a large number of American defense companies, but also the Pentagon itself, channels substantial revenues amounts through accommodation addresses – out of sight of the tax department. In total, 29 stock market registered companies had been investigated, who had received more than one billion dollars from the American Ministry of Justice in 2009. According to Minister De Jager, the report had been drawn up ‘to gain insight in the use of overseas participations by contractors of the American Ministry of Defense during the period 2003-2008’. The information on which participations the American defense-multinationals have and in which countries these participations are established, is public information that follows from the registration and report obligation with the Security Exchange Commission (SEC).

(Source: National newspaper Amigoe)

21 April 2010