Caribbean News Now!

By Caribbean News Now contributor

TAMPA, USA -- Just days after a massive cache of confidential financial documents was published that shed a great deal of light on Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney’s investments in the Cayman Islands, his campaign toasted its top donors on Wednesday aboard a 150-foot yacht also flying the flag of the Cayman Islands.

The floating party was hosted by Gary Morse, developer of the Villages retirement community, on his yacht "Cracker Bay," which is registered in the Cayman Islands, and was flying the Cayman Islands “Red Ensign” or merchant flag, ABC News reported.

"I think it's ironic they do this aboard a yacht that doesn't even pay its taxes," said a woman who lives aboard a much smaller boat moored at the St Petersburg Municipal Marina in Florida.

Romney's Cayman-based investments have come under fire during the campaign.

In a recent article entitled “The Bain Files: Inside Mitt Romney’s Tax-Dodging Cayman Schemes”, John Cook of the Gawker reported on more than 950 pages of internal audits, financial statements, and private investor letters for 21 cryptically named entities in which Romney had invested, many of them offshore funds based in the Cayman Islands.

“Together, they reveal the mind-numbing, maze-like, and deeply opaque complexity with which Romney has handled his wealth, the exotic tax-avoidance schemes available only to the preposterously wealthy that benefit him, the unlikely (for a right-wing religious Mormon) places that his money has ended up, and the deeply hypocritical distance between his own criticisms of Obama's fiscal approach and his money managers' embrace of those same policies,” Cook wrote.

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