Tax paradise

Jan 30, 2004

I noticed a set of e-mail messages bouncing among the family lately, messages about the shenanigans – no, corruption! – of the Bush Administration and their cozy relationship to Halliburton and other companies. In Bob Herbert’s column today, I see that there’s even a Vanuatu connection (Vanuatu is where Erin and I served as Peace Corps Volunteers):

Vanuatu? Who knew?

Vanuatu is a mountainous group of islands in the South Pacific. Its people support themselves mostly by fishing and subsistence farming. “Additional revenues,” according to the Columbia Encyclopedia, “derive from a growing tourist industry and the development of Vila [the capital] as a corporate tax shelter.”

Halliburton, in an S.E.C. filing in 2000, duly noted that it had a subsidiary incorporated in Vanuatu called Kinhill Kramer (Vanuatu) Ltd.

Anton Zuiker ☄