Paradise Papers: Link to firm that sued murdered Malta journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia

Former Allens Arthur Robinson lawyer James McConvill reported after a 2010 marketing trip for Appleby to Auckland and Wellington that law firms told him that then Prime Minister John Key was leading measures to promote New Zealand as an offshore hub through foreign trusts, which pay no tax on earnings outside New Zealand.

"Apparently the New Zealand Prime Minister is personally pushing the proposal, and it is expected to come into effect in 2011," Mr McConvill reported. "In numerous meetings I was told that this proposal, if implemented, could lead to a lot of work for Appleby and other offshore firms."

Cooks Island residents also hold New Zealand citizenship, but Rarotonga​ runs its own foreign policy.

The Cook Islands was the first country to enact an asset protection law in 1989, under which foreign creditors are barred from challenging the assets of a trust after a waiting period of one to two years.

Chris Kalin, the Swiss chairman of Henley & Partners, declined to comment.

Ms Caruana Galizia, who led coverage in Malta of the Panama Papers, and assisted The Australian Financial Review's investigations last year, was a trenchant critic of Henley & Partners' role in a scheme to raise $US1 billion ($1.3 billion) for the government by selling Maltese citizenship.

She was killed in a car bomb on October 16, over matters unrelated to Henley & Partners and the lawsuit.

The firm has "condemned in the strongest possible terms the brutal murder" of Ms Caruana Galizia and extended condolences to the family.

Ms Caruana Galizia's son Matthew, who is a member of the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, has accused Mr Kalin of Henley & Partners of conspiring with politicians in Malta "to financially cripple my mother with one vexatious lawsuit after another", a charge which Mr Kalin denies.

Ms Caruana Galizia published correspondence between Malta's Prime Minister, Joseph Muscat, and Mr Kalin in November last year, setting out Henley & Partners' plan to sue Ms Caruana Galizia in Britain after she reported that €310.5 million ($471 million) raised from the controversial scheme had not yet reached the government's development fund as intended.

The Maltese government reported in May that €216.8 million from the Individual Investor Program had been transferred to the fund.

On January 25, 2007, Mr Kalin emailed Asiaciti to ask about Cook Island trusts: "Also, I have a particular question: I have heard that the period during which any challenges regarding any transfers to the trust can be brought has been reduced from two years to none. Is this correct? Can you send me any information on this?"

Adrian Taylor of Asiaciti told Mr Kalin that "the maximum time limitation period in respect of creditor 'fraudulent transfer' actions is two years from the date of transfer of assets into the trust. In some cases that period may be as little as 12 months."

Mr Kalin replied: "I will be in touch or may refer the client directly to you. His name is Mr Karkukly from Chicago."

No further details are available. However, the following day Mr Taylor referred to Mr Kalin in an email exchange with a lawyer with Texas law firm Cantey Hanger.

The US lawyer responded: "I spoke to Chris no more than 30 minutes ago. I know exactly why he is asking about Cook Island entities. I know so because he told me and asked me about it.

"I think it is a great opportunity for Asiaciti, assuming your business sources in Switzerland do not catch wind of it."

US records indicate only one family named Karkukly lived in Chicago at the time, with several family members involved in setting up a remittance business.

One of these, Ahmad Karkukly, a loans officer with Countrywide Home Loans Inc, was subsequently jailed for his part in a $US17.2 million mortgage fraud which was uncovered in December 2006.

Henley & Partners declined to comment. Its position is that it has never had any involvement whatsoever in the Cook Islands. Asiaciti did not comment.

Henley Trust, which changed its name to Athos Group last year, provides corporate and trust services but had no legal connection with Henley & Partners, the firm maintains.

In December 2012 H&P Trust Company (Switzerland) AG wrote to Asiaciti's Cook Islands office to introduce Dmitry Fadeev, a Singapore-based Russian who earned $US37 million in a $US1.4 billion sale of Russia's largest juicing company to Pepsico in 2008.

The enclosed letter was on Henley & Partners stationery and used a Henleyglobal.com email address.

Asiaciti set up the Sakama Trust for Fadeev, to hold 7 million shares in Eagle Holdings Ltd of Anguilla and millions of shares in Panama companies Vinson International SA and Byzantium Global SA.

Henley & Partners also appears in the Appleby files, which show the firm was forced to repay $US468,150 in a legal action by Russian Otkritie Securities over a $US150 million fraud by its London traders.

Ruslan Pinaev, one of the Otkritie traders involved with the fraud had paid Henley $US492,118. Mr Kalin declined to answer if the payment was for a citizenship application.

The Asiaciti files show numerous clients – property developers, doctors, dentists, fund managers – who noted that all income was reported to tax offices.

Kenneth Whitney, the lawyer for former NZ PM John Key, in 2007 set up Catamount Holdings Trust for New York investment banker Neil Winward, formerly of Dresdner Kleinwort.

In other cases, Asiaciti offered a mortgage scheme where clients could in effect lend money to themselves from offshore accounts, and claim interest payments as deductions.

Other Asiaciti trust clients in the Cook Islands include:

Gary A Denkberg, who set up two trusts, and is facing charges of defrauding elderly people in the US of $US30 million.

The family of Kazakhstan senior official Serik Burkitbayev, one-time adviser to President Nursultan Nazarbayev, who was convicted of corruption in 2009.

Kevin Trudeau, imprisoned for fraud in the US in January over a long-running series of marketing frauds.

A $US25 million trust for Eduardo Langoria, whose family would later be embroiled in a bitter dispute over the estate of Mexican businessman Eduardo Langoria Senior.

And Kevin W Wessel, who the California District Court ruled "intentionally misrepresented and concealed important facts as part of a fraudulent asset protection scheme" in which clients deposited more than $US6.3 million in what they believed was a Swedish bank called The Alps.

New York lawyer Marie Kaiser-Napoli set up a Cook Island trust in November 2015 called the MEKN 2008 Family Trust, listing its purpose as "to provide a degree of protection from long-term inflation".

Her husband Paul Napoli and law partner Marc Bern had won hundreds of millions of dollars from class actions for 9/11 responders and others, before their partnership dissolved in a bitterly acrimonious series of lawsuits in 2014 against Bern and Paul's former mistress.

In 2014, while Israeli real estate developer Moti Zisser was battling attempts by banks to force him into bankruptcy over debt of $US700 million, his son David set up the Cottian trust in the Cook Islands.

At the time David Zisser's lawyer, Ram Jeanne, said his business "has never had any connection to Motti Zisser, and any attempt to link David Zisser's business to Motti Zisser has no connection with reality".