Auzzie officials follow $1.5B tax trial to Cayman

(Herlad Sun): The Australian taxman is following a $1.5 billion money trail that started with the float of the Australian retail empire Myer and ended in a Caribbean tax haven. A fortune was allegedly drained from Australian bank accounts and bounced through another three countries before coming to rest in the Cayman Islands. By the time Australian Taxation Office investigators pounced and froze the Australian accounts, there was only $45 left. The saga involves a beauty queen, the son of a former state premier and tens of thousands of mum-and-dad investors who have lost half of their investments in Myer.

The case centres on a complex network of companies and leads to tax havens in the Caribbean islands and the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg, where billions, not millions, of dollars are allegedly hidden. It has tied tax investigators in knots for two years until a breakthrough this week when a Federal Court judge ruled in favour of the tax office.

Federal Court Justice John Middleton this week decided the tax office could also serve Mr Gray with documents seeking to wind up NB Queen SARL in Luxembourg and its parent company, TPG Newbridge Myer, in the Cayman Islands. The two companies were part of a complicatedstructure involved in the sale of TPG's 81 per cent holding in Myer, which allegedly saw the money moved across four countries.

The money reportedly moved from Australia to a company called NB Swanston BV in the Netherlands, then to another company, NB Queen SARL, in Luxembourg and finally to TPG Newbridge Myer in the Cayman Islands.

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