FORMER president of the European Parliament Pat Cox is a director of an offshore company registered in Ireland.
Mr Cox, who is being mentioned as a candidate for nomination to the European Commission, is a director of Pat Cox Incorporated, a company incorporated in the British Virgin Islands in November 2007 and registered here in February 2008 with an address in Blackrock, Co Dublin.
The use of offshore companies is perfectly legal, although bodies such as the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development have over recent years been campaigning against some practices associated with them.
A spokesman for Mr Cox said the company was set up by Mr Cox’s son, Patrick Cox, and that the decision to use an offshore company was to allow the directors take loans from the company for use in other business ventures. No such loans have, in fact, been issued.
“Its activities are here. It pays wages and tax in Ireland. It has no offshore activities,” the spokesman said. “Its bank account arrangements are exclusively in Ireland.”
He said Mr Cox has in the past done work for the company, making presentations and such matters, to assist his son. The company conducts research for clients and gives strategic advice to companies, he said. It has been involved in demographic analysis linked to the provision of advice on student accommodation needs in eastern Europe.
The two directors of the company, according to a filing in February 2008, are Mr Cox and his son. Mr Cox gives his occupation as consultant and says he is also a director of Capa Ltd.
Capa is a consultancy business based in Cork and owned by Mr Cox and his wife, Cathy. The latest accounts show it was owed €3,600 from Pat Cox Incorporated at the end of 2008.
Mr Cox is also a director of Tiger Developments (Europe) Ltd, a Cork-based company owned by Michael O’Flynn. Mr Cox joined the O’Flynn property group in late 2007 to work on its then developing European portfolio. The O’Flynn group built the 83 metre high Elysian building in Cork.
Since retiring from the European Parliament, Mr Cox has taken on a number of positions with well-known multinational groups.
He is a member of the Microsoft European Advisory Council and the Pfizer Europe Advisory Council , and is on the Conseil de Surveillance, or main board, of Michelin.
He was also a member of the Worldwide International Advisory Council of the large Washington-based consultancy business APCO and a partner in a consultancy business based in Brussels, European Integration Solutions.
Mr Cox is also president of the International European Movement; is on the board of trustees of the Crisis Group (an independent body that deals with international crises); is on the board of trustees of the Edmund Rice Schools Trust in Ireland (holds the Christian Brothers’ schools in trust); is on the Smurfit Business School board; is on the President’s Advisory Group in UCC; and is a patron of a Limerick charity called the Blue Box.