Recently, Alec Duncan posted a discussion promoting gossip website Gawker.com and their release of business documents proporting to show Republican Presidential Candidate Mitt Romney's off-shore business dealings.  While the documents turn up nothing out of the ordinary, attention has turned to Gawker.com themselves.

It turns out that they are part of a shell company, which is based out of the Cayman Islands.

As John Cassidy relates in The New Yorker, Gawker’s finances are “organized like an international money-laundering operation.” For example:

"Much of its international revenues are directed through Hungary, where [bossman Nick] Denton’s mother hails from, and where some of the firm’s techies are located. But that is only part of it. Recently, [Felix] Salmon reports, the various Gawker operations—Gawker Media LLC, Gawker Entertainment LLC, Gawker Technology LLC, Gawker Sales LLC—have been restructured to bring them under control of a shell company based in the Cayman Islands, Gawker Media Group Inc.

Why would a relatively small media outfit based in Soho choose to incorporate itself in a Caribbean locale long favored by insider dealers, drug cartels, hedge funds, and other entities with lots of cash they don’t want to advertise? The question virtually answers itself, but for those unversed in the intricacies of international tax avoidance Salmon spells it out: “The result is a company where 130 U.S. employees eat up the lion’s share of the the U.S. revenues, resulting in little if any taxable income, while the international income, the franchise value of the brands, and the value of the technology all stays permanently overseas, untouched by the I.R.S.”