Despite denial, records show Romney owned Bermuda shell corporation before forming blind trust

Mitt Romney has released just one year's worth of his tax returns. Yesterday, Mitt Romney told Radio Iowa's O. Kay Henderson that he didn't know anything about his offshore investments because they were held in a blind trust. "I don't manage them," he said. "I don't even know where they are."

As I pointed out, Romney's statement raised several obvious questions, the first of which was whether he had any of these investments before creating his blind trust. If so, Romney's attempt to wipe his hands clean would backfire because it would become clear he was trying to cover up the truth.

And now, according to public records cited by the Obama campaign, it appears that Romney did in fact hold at least one of his offshore investments before the formation of his blind trust: a Bermuda-based shell corporation formed in 1997 known as Sankaty High Yield Investors Ltd with Mitt Romney as the sole owner.

In a research document, the campaign writes:

The problem with Romney's claim? The Bermuda corporation'Sankaty High Yield Asset Investors'was registered in 1997 and Romney was listed as the 'the sole shareholder, a director, and president' of the corporation. The Bermuda corporation was under his personal ownership until it was transferred into a blind trust in his wife's name the day before he was sworn in as governor, possibly to avoid disclosure. In fact, the one fulltax return Romney did release shows that he directly owned the company as recently in 2010 and it was not held in his trust.

Mitt Romney's continued dishonesty on his investments in offshore tax havens and corporations raises serious questions about why he won't release his tax returns. Only a release of additional tax returns will allow us to see if Romney avoided U.S. taxes with his offshore holdings.

So we now have at least one clear cut example of Mitt Romney making a public statement about his financial history that is clearly refuted by the limited records available for public scrutiny. This should be a wakeup call not just to those who are covering his campaign but also to the public at large. Romney isn't just hiding his tax returns and financial records from public disclosure, he's not telling the truth about the records that have already been released.