Africa-Press – Mauritius. Many of us at some time or other may have come across a requirement to specify the beneficiary owner or ultimate beneficiary of some company/société, and banks to have a Know Your Customer (KYC) requirement, it seems, to abide by corporate governance legislation. Non-charitable Trusts on the other hand are structures that seem wholly impervious, secretive and above such governance considerations.
There are many valid reasons notaries and legal specialists find Trusts, which operate in Mauritius under the 2001 enacted legislation, very useful instruments for their generally wealthy clients: management of family wealth over generations, tax and succession planning, inheritance tax issues, asset protection and confidentiality for instance.
Those very features of confidentiality and secrecy are also powerful adjuncts in the marketing of the Mauritius financial jurisdiction by talented Assets Managers and other finance professionals, local or expatriate, but this aspect need not concern us unduly here.
What may concern the financial and legal community, at a time when other types of structures are subject to good governance scrutiny, is whether Trusts should continue to operate under the cloak of total secrecy, without even a minimum need to register anywhere with any regulatory body.
And what if there are good grounds by competent investigative agencies to believe that a trust may have been set up or may be used to hide or protect proceeds of a corrupt or an unlawful activity?
The question is not merely rhetorical for several reasons but obviously as laymen we can only suggest that legal and financial minds pore over the issues in the light of growing worldwide demands for greater transparency, less corruption and better governance.
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