Commerce Minister Simon Power should discuss with officials the registration of companies with overseas directors such as John M Carr, after the recent flare up of controversy over New Zealand hardcore porn companies John Carr co- directs with “NZ Porn King” Steve Crow – which are all linked to a Florida registered professional association (P.A.) shareholder Carr Consulting P.A. Investigators should be looking at flaws in the New Zealand companies registration system that allowed a Texas-based NZ company director, John Malcolm Carr (see photo – http://www.carr.co.nz/images/jmc.jpg), with US and NZ citizenship, to falsely represent the shareholding of four NZ companies he directs (including Velocity Partners Ltd) and get away with it, using a false corporation name “Cuchara Inc” from 14 March 2000 until 16 December 2009.
Within two days of the falsehood and offence against the Companies Act 1993 being made public on the Society’s website, John Malcolm Carr changed the name of the shareholder of all the companies he directs owned by “Cuchara Inc” to Carr Consulting P.A. and changed the shareholders’ registered address from a San Antonio Texas one to 14/31 Greenlane Rd, Remuera, Auckland, the same address he claims to be his own residential address. Mr Carr was the registered agent and Principal who had the corporation name changed in Florida from Cuchara Inc to Carr Consulting P.A. in March 1999 and had the terms of incorporation of the entity changed at that time.
Inquiries by the National Enforcement Unit and Overseas Investment Office, prompted by Society complaints, are on-going into Mr Carr’s companies. The investigations have not only raised questions about the extraordinary lengths to which a US-based company director would go to hide the identity of a shareholder, its address and his own residential address, but the extent to which New Zealand companies registration system fails to show the real beneficial owners of companies.
NZPA has reported today that the Ministry of Economic Development has recently defended its company registration system in the wake of claims that it was open to being exploited for money laundering or terrorist activities. The Society suspects the export and import of hardcore porn internationally could involve money laundering.
The ministry’s business registries manager, Justin Hygate, said the system was robust, but the New Zealand branch of the anti-corruption organisation Transparency International said one recent case [involving the transport of North Korean weapons] raised questions about the stringency of company incorporation laws.
” The issues … are obviously of concern, especially the transparency of processes which allow companies to be formed without confirmed identification of directors and shareholders,” Transparency International’s executive officer in Wellington, Paul Browne told NZPA.
There should be processes “that would send alarm bells with this number of companies being formed with offshore directors and without any clear reason for their existence”, he said.
After the companies John M Carr directs, such as Eden Digital Ltd and CVC Group Ltd (both co-directed with “NZ Porn King” Steve Crow), were exposed by the Society as promoting and financing hardcore pornography, staging the Boobs on Bikes Porn Sleaze parade in Auckland and the 3-day ASB Showgrounds Porn Fest; Mr Carr has retaliated in ways that have drawn the media spotlight onto his business affairs and the convoluted nature of his company operations linked to the peddling of hardcore porn.
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