Economy
Robert’s brave endorsement. Mercury’s bold backing
Robert Wallace
Statement by Robert Wallace – TCCI Chief Executive Officer:
“Tasmania’s peak business body, the Tasmanian Chamber of Commerce and Industry (TCCI) has applauded the announcement that Richard Chandler Capital Corporation intends to invest in Tasmania through Gunns and facilitate the development of the pulp mill.”
Seems that nobody from the TCCI investigated where the Richard Chandler Capital Corporation is registered? If they had they would have discovered its registered in the beautiful Cayman Islands. One of the beautiful things about the Cayman Islands is ‘There are no taxes on profits, capital gains, income or any withholding taxes charged to foreign investors. There are no estate or death duties payable on Cayman Islands real estate or other assets held in the Cayman Islands’. All very nice for the Richard Chandler Capital Corporation but is that who they really are?
According to a Sino Oil & Gas transaction from last year its as clear as mud. “Mandolin Fund Pte Limited is a wholly owned subsidiary of Richard Chandler Capital Corporation Pte Limited
which is in turn a wholly owned subsidiary of Richard Chandler Capital Corporation. Richard Chandler Capital Corporation is wholly owned by Cosimo Management Limited as trustee of a trust of which Mr. Richard Chandler is the settlor. Pursuant to the SFO, Richard Chandler Capital Corporation Pte Limited, Richard Chandler Capital Corporation, Cosimo Management Limited and Mr. Richard Chandler as settlor are taken to be interested in the Shares held by Mandolin Fund Pte Limited.”
This corporate structure has more connections than many Tasmanians have synapses but its only the tip of iceberg. The RCCC has also operated in the tax havens of Monaco and Dubai. What it shows is that the TCCI is willing to ‘applaud’ anybody, even if they don’t have a clue who they are or what they are up to from investing in a proposal that has already got a long and tawdry history of deception, resignations, sackings and the corporate manipulation of public office.
From Karl Stevens’ website, West Tamar Talk, with full links, here.
• Mercury backs the mill
Editorial: All grist for the mill
EDITORIAL | March 07, 2012 01.00am
WITH the future for 550 Tasmanian workers at Alcan’s Bell Bay aluminium smelter under a cloud, there is an increasing imperative to build Gunns Ltd’s proposed pulp mill.
Alcan workers have been warned by management that market conditions are extremely challenging, with an abnormally high Australian dollar looking unlikely to return to pre-global financial crisis levels at least in the short term, and with international competition intensifying. Workers were yesterday told that potline suspensions and closure of the historic plant – the first aluminium smelter built in the southern hemisphere – were unlikely in the short term, but the future remains uncertain.
BHP Temco manganese smelter, which employs 400 Tasmanians, is set to suspend operations to review circumstances over the next three months. About 150 jobs will go by July at Beaconsfield gold mine. And Artec woodchip export operations at Bell Bay have been suspended.
The perfect storm is brewing for heavy industry, and northern Tasmania stands to lose more than 1000 jobs if the economic maelstrom continues to blow our way.
Pulp mill construction would provide an immediate financial injection, and while the number of jobs in the mill is in the low hundreds, it would be a heart-starting jolt to a region headed for cardiac arrest.
With white knight New Zealand businessman Richard Chandler riding into Gunns in recent months, there is more chance that a mill may be built if not on the Tamar, at Hampshire behind Burnie on the North-West Coast where a huge plantation estate awaits harvest.
The mill assessment debacle has understandably left a foul taste in the mouths of many Tamar residents, conservationists and right-minded Tasmanian citizens. But with Gunns withdrawing from native forest harvesting, selling its Triabunna woodchip mill and vowing to use only plantation stock in its mill, there will be residents, greens and concerned citizens prepared to reconsider.
Gunns says it is not interested in further destruction of native Tasmanian forests, and its actions appear to back up its words.
The collapse of heavy industry in the North, will add an immense weight to the argument that the mill needs to be built.
This island urgently needs investment. The state’s coffers are bare. Jobs are being shed in the private and public sector.
Pragmatism suggests a plantation-fed mill is the type of forestry investment most Tasmanians including some formerly opposed to the original plan could accept in the face of a jobs crisis in the North.
It is a pity the Resource Planning and Development Commission process, with its public hearings and input, was not able to finish assessment of the project. The RPDC process was designed to be transparent to enable Tasmanians to have faith in the decision. Much uncertainty, wariness and distrust that haunts the project could have been avoided.