Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney utilised shell companies in Bermuda and the Cayman Islands to help eligible investors avoid paying US taxes, federal and state records show.

That is according to the Los Angeles Times, which went on to point out that Mr. Romney gained no personal tax benefit from the legal operations in both offshore tax havens.

But, it said, aides and former colleagues to the presidential hopeful acknowledged that the tax-friendly jurisdictions helped attract billions of additional investment dollars to his former company, Bain Capital, boosting his own and his partners' profits.

In Bermuda, Romney served as president and sole shareholder at Sankaty High Yield Asset Investors for four years, which funneled money into Bain Capital's Sankaty family of hedge funds, the paper claimed.

Despite having no office or staff on the Island, Sankaty, which was set up in October 1997, is registered at a lawyer's office in downtown Hamilton.