Goodman Luxembourg firm paid 0.4% tax on profit of €52.6m

Company accounts provide insight into Parlesse Investments

A Larry Goodman company based in Luxembourg made a profit of €52.6 million in 2013 and paid just 0.4 per cent tax, according to accounts in the tiny EU member state.

The company, Parlesse Investments Sarl, began operations in 2010 and had accumulated profits of €278.6 million at the end of March 2013, the latest period for which accounts are available. Tiny amounts of tax relative to the profits made were paid over the four-year period.

Dividend
In 2013, Parlesse paid a dividend of €24.3 million to its owner, a company called Galway Ltd, based in Malta.

The company’s accounts provide a unique insight into the wealth and scale of the operation run by Mr Goodman.

His ABP Food Group, with its headquarters in Ardee, Co Louth, is one of Europe’s top beef producers, with a multibillion euro turnover and more than 8,000 employees. More than a quarter of its employees are in Ireland, where it has been a major player in the Irish economy for a number of decades.

Up to now, little has been known about Mr Goodman’s business affairs, because most of his companies are either unlimited, and therefore not obliged to publish accounts, or are based offshore, mostly in Jersey.

The Luxembourg company has shares in, and loans out to, a range of Mr Goodman’s businesses, including ABP Food Group entities and companies with interests in the Blackrock Clinic, the Hermitage private hospital and the Setanta Centre office complex, all in Dublin.

These shares and loans had a total value of more than €800 million in 2013. The company earns its income from interest payments and dividends paid by the associated companies in other jurisdictions.

Entities such as Parlesse Investments featured in the recent Luxleaks controversy, which focused on how Luxembourg allows multinational companies use legal measures that have the effect of shifting profits to the duchy, where they are then taxed at a very low rate.

The Irish Times has also established that a Dutch company owned by Parlesse, called Parma Investments BV, made a profit of €24.8 million in 2013 and paid no tax. A spokesman for Mr Goodman, who is a former managing director of Parlesse, said he had no comment to make.

The Parlesse accounts show that two companies based in Castlebellingham, Co Louth, gave interest-free loans totalling €385 million to the Luxembourg company. The accounts also show money loaned out by Parlesse to Goodman companies in other jurisdictions carried an interest rate of 7 per cent.

Mr Goodman has had a long, successful and, at times, controversial career. The Dáil returned from holidays in August 1990 to pass emergency legislation to save the Goodman group from collapse, such was its considered importance to the Irish economy.

Beef tribunal
Over the following decade Mr Goodman managed to reassert control over the business, which has since then grown to become the third-largest meat processor in Europe.

His meat processing group featured heavily in the sittings of the beef tribunal in the early 1990s.

The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development is currently working on new rules aimed at preventing multinationals from shifting profits between jurisdictions in aggressive drives to run down their tax bills.