Trump’s Treasury pick failed to disclose Cayman funds
Steven Mnuchin
(CNS Business): US President-elect Donald Trump’s pick to be treasury secretary, the controversial former Goldman Sachs banker, Steven Mnuchin, failed to disclose nearly $100 million of his assets to the Senate Finance Committee, the US press is reporting. Mnuchin, known to most Americans as the man who foreclosed on thousands of people’s homes in the wake of the crash, also failed to reveal his position as a director of an investment fund here in the Cayman Islands.
Hours before Mnuchin was scheduled to testify before the Senate Finance Committee and answer questions about his role in what has been described as a “foreclosure machine” during the financial crisis, he found himself dealing with the disclosure failures after an article appeared in the New York Times.
Mnuchin apparently made a last-minute disclosure revealing millions more in financial assets, including $95 million worth of real estate and Dune Capital International, an investment fund incorporated in Cayman, as well as several other investment funds. Despite being billed as being a brilliant financial expert by Trump, the former banker said that his original failure to disclose all of his assets was not intentional but a mistake because all of the forms were complicated.
The Democrats, however, were not convinced. “Never before has the Senate considered such an ethically challenged slate of nominees for key cabinet positions,” Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, the minority leader, said in a statement ahead of the hearings. “Mr Mnuchin’s failure to disclose his Cayman Islands holdings just reeks of the swamp that the president-elect promised to drain on the campaign trail.”
CNS Business has contacted the Trump transition team on several occasions asking if Trump himself has any investments or assets domiciled in Cayman, as well as what the president-elect thinks about offshore financial service centres and the impact they have on the US economy. So far none of Trump’s staff have responded to any of the queries.
Trump may well end up having an impact on Cayman’s economy as his promise to cut corporation tax in the US and his commitment to reduce finance repatriation taxes could see some US firms remove their investments from offshore centres, including Cayman.
Watch the committee hearings on-line here.
Category: Finance, Financial Services, US, World Business
Really? Wait till Trump drops corporate tax to 15%, Then all the US money will go home, Bye bye, hello Wilmington,Nevada,Wyoming and Connecticut .