Socomer

"Once the money had reached Socomer, it was transferred to another Switzerland-based company, Cordotex. This company would collect commissions, patent fees, and profits from companies outside Sweden. At the beginning of the seventies, they had reached 10 billion sold packages per year, which required 140,000 tons of paper, plastic, and aluminum. The commissions on the materials for all these packages gave Cordotex a modest 4 million kronor in 1970. When the money arrived, Cordotex acted as the group’s internal bank. The company allocated money to various companies that needed funds for investments or to cover losses. However, most of the money was sent to the Rausing family foundations in the tax haven of Liechtenstein. There were two foundations; one, Hansra, was for the benefit of Hans’s family; the other, Gadsra, was for Gad’s family. But so far, there were no profits to deposit in the foundations, it was merely about commissions being transferred to Cordotex."

"Dutch Tetra Pak then transferred the shares to the two Dutch holding companies Hansra BV and Yora BV, which in turn were owned by the two Liechtenstein family foundations Hansra and Yora (formerly Gadsra), which had previously taken over Socomer and Cordotex. The shares went to the Netherlands due to the country’s favorable tax rules for capital transfers from subsidiaries to a Dutch parent company. Thereby, it was no problem to first send money to Hansra or Yora and then onwards to the foundations or needy companies around the world."

"Formally, it was not the family that bought the shares but AB Vapor which was the official owner of Tetra Pak. However, Vapor was in turn owned by the Rausing brothers. The money to redeem the outstanding shares was obtained by Vapor in the same way as Socomer in Switzerland. The company functioned not only as an owner company but also took commissions from Swedish Tetra Pak suppliers. Thus, the purchases were made possible by money that the Rausing family had earned from Tetra Pak, but which had been concealed from the minority shareholders they wanted to kick out of the company."

"For the arrangement to hold against the Swedish authorities, it was of utmost importance that someone in the family lived abroad and stood as the owner of the companies. The company Tetra Pak could not have any ownership ties to companies such as Socomer and Cordotex. The owner of the companies could also not have any formal ties to Sweden, but had to be registered abroad. Otherwise, the construction would likely have failed for legal reasons."

"But by virtue of its large material purchases, Tetra Pak could request to buy directly from suppliers and avoid the costly intermediary that agents represented. But not only that, Tetra Pak requested that the suppliers continue to charge the same final amounts as before. However, the commission that was previously paid out to agents would now be paid to Socomer instead. In this way, large revenues were obtained that could formally never be linked to Tetra Pak and that never passed through Sweden but went directly to Socomer."