I’m back on the case of the Cone Marshall trust firm of Auckland, and their links to Panamanian nominee directors for their New Zealand companies. In particular, companies like Experian Latam Holdings, Consorcio Andino de Invesiones Ltd, and Capitales Andino Ltd. The latter two company names suggest a Colombian link, but the directors are from Panama, if not the shareholders. Indeed, the shareholders of the Andino companies are Hanghang Liu (Capitales) and Xueqi Zhang (Consorcio) of Beijing, China. The shareholder of Experian Latam is a Yenny Wati, listed as living in Singapore. Doing the Google search for these names brings a common denominator: Morimor, or the Morgan Y Morgan law firm of Panama. It seems that Morgan & Morgan is quite a big law firm with a global reach.

So I will look at a few more New Zealand companies that are administered by Cone Marshall, and have Panamanian directors, and foreign shareholders. First the companies that Morimor have had a shareholding in, or at least, Morymor Legal Services Holdings Inc of Belize. These include Grayson Global Limited set up in 2013, with Morymor as the original shareholder, before the 100 shares were taken over by Victor Manuel Epifano (who is listed as living in Italy, but appears to be in Panama). Then there are two more recent companies created for Morymor: Bronstain Capital Ltd, and Western Capital Partners Ltd. Both of these companies have a common Panamanian director, Lineth del Carmen Ponce Vergara; and Bronstain also has a new director in Justo Alejandro Reyna Villarreal replacing one of the old hands, Jose Eugenio Silva Ritter.

Jose Silva Ritter is still a director of three New Zealand companies: EQ Holdings Ltd, Pharmexcorp Ltd, and Atlantic & Pacific Trading Ventures Ltd. The shareholder in EQ Holdings is Xuemei Zhang, who is listed as being in Beijing, but other directorships suggest she actually lives in New Zealand; and I will return to Pharmexcorp below. But Jose Silva is apparently involved in 23 000 other companies that Morgan y Morgan of Panama has set up over the years, and some of them are obviously dodgy. This may explain the reports in the Spanish  language newspapers in Latin America, which state he is being held under house arrest. Companies linked to Silva Ritter and Morgan Y Morgan are implicated in corruption investigations in Brazil, as in the Operation Lata Jato (Car Wash), and in other parts of South America. According to ElPitazo.Com from April 2016, Ritter’s companies are linked to payments to Jose Dirceu, the Brazilian minister accused of corruption; to a case against the former President of Peru, Alejandro Toledo, involving tax evasion; and to a case against Fabricio Correa, the brother of the Ecuadorian President Correa, involving the International Energy Overseas Corporation set up by Morgan & Morgan. There are obviously more cases linked to the Panamanian law firm, even if this does not include New Zealand companies.

But I want to look at a few of the other New Zealand companies for which Jose Silva Ritter is not a director, before returning to Pharmexcorp. There are two companies in which Ritter’s colleagues are directors, that were set up by Cone Marshall last year: Cargo Trading ltd and Phoenix Trading Development Ltd. Both have the same shareholder in Aldo Alfonso Pesce Cotera, resident in Santiago, Chile. Aldo Pesce is obviously in the aviation industry, but  a Google search shows that he’s been involved in a number of civil legal cases in the USA (as Cotera). So this might explain why he needs New Zealand companies to trade with, if this is what he intends to do with them. Finally to Pharmexcorp, which has a shareholder who is listed as living in a ‘commune’ in eastern France, Clara-Maria Duenas Roman. She appears to be a medical doctor in Geneva, where Pharmex S.A. is based. This company is also linked to one Phillipe Brelle, who happens to be listed in the Panama Papers database. Brelle is linked to Lindien S.A., and a trust firm in Geneva called Vertex, which is also the base for the Yellowstone company from Morocco, a company that does actually trade commodities.