SHILLONG: The infamous Panama Papers may put a few Meghalaya businessmen in a spot of bother too. According to reports in a local website Raiot quoting the Panama leaks, influential tribal and non-tribal businessmen and a retired technocrat from Meghalaya have been named in the Panama Papers as shareholders of off shore entities in notorious tax havens managed by the much maligned financial management company Mossack Fonseca.
Initial investigation of the recent data dump by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) names Earce Clifford Kharsyntiew, Les Shylla , Bokstar Kurkalang, Karishma Jain, Karan Jain, Reshmi Rohit Jain, Philip Palamalki and Kenneth Fletcher Rangad as shareholders in at least two off shore companies Azure Enterprises Global Inc and Eternal Enterprises Inc. These companies are based in British Virgin Island and have addresses in Cyprus.
According to the leaks, on further investigation, it was found that there are no such persons named Philip Palamalki andLess Shylla in Meghalaya, but there are Philip Pala and Lesly Shylla who are publicly listed as directors of Alpha Millennium Foods Private Limited, Cosmos Wahiajer Narpuh Cements Private Limited, Sutnga Cements Limited, MAI Hotels Limited, CMJ Realtors and Developers Private Limited.
While Lesly Shylla is known more as the promoter behind the jinxed Crowborough Hotel, Philip Pala is the younger brother of the present Congress MP from Shillong and ex-Minister of Water Resources in the UPA II Government, Vincent Pala. Meanwhile, Bokstar Kurkalang is also a director of Megha Infracon Private Limited along with Philip Pala. These three are in one way or the other also part of CMJ group based out of Assam and Meghalaya with offices in Mumbai.
Reshmi Rohit Jain and Karan Jain are co-directors of KRK Realtors and Developers Private Limited, Aegis Realtors & Developers Private Limited and KK Impex and Trading Private Limited located in Mumbai and the same location incidentally is also the marketing office of CMJ Breweries which was headed by one Rohit Jain.
CMJ Breweries CEO Ronak Jain is also co-director of CMJ Holdings Limited and CMJ Cements Private Limited with Lesly Shylla. These off shore money parking businessmen and women have long standing local ties, the website says. Local activists and NGOs have long alleged that non-tribal business interests have used local tribals as conduits to channel money, subsidies, tax benefits etc that would otherwise be denied to them according to the laws of the state, it added. In this revealing network, the name Kenneth Fletcher Rangad, resident of Queen Villa, Laban; Hari; Sabha, is an interesting one. The (L) Kenneth Fletcher Rangad was Director of Industries when the single window policy of the state was implemented to supposedly industrialize Meghalaya through tax sops and special industrial zones, the website pointed out.
Many of the non-tribal businesses came up by way of such policies. It may be mentioned that the Panama Papers are an unprecedented leak of 11.5m files from the database of the world’s fourth biggest offshore law firm, Mossack Fonseca. The records were obtained from an anonymous source by the German newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung, which shared them with the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ). The ICIJ then shared them with a large network of international partners, including the Guardian and BBC. The documents show various ways in which the rich exploit secretive offshore tax regimes.
