Negative publicity for Bermuda from the US media continued yesterday with an opinion piece in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer which slammed the Island as a "tax dodge" jurisdiction.

The Seattle Post Intelligencer (SPI) - a daily paper with a circulation of close to 176,000 - ran an editorial titled "Look into Bermuda Tax Dodge," which follows last week's front page New York Times story by David Cay Johnston.

The SPI, with attribution to the New York Times story, said setting up a business on the Island is "usually a paper transaction" and the company "won't even have to have an office in Bermuda".

Finance Minister Eugene Cox last week challenged that assumption and said that companies do have to set-up a registered office under the Companies Act 1981 and are legally required to maintain a register of members, corporate minutes and accounts.

The SPI column also inaccurately reported the number of failed energy giant Enron subsidiaries based in Bermuda. It read: "Enron Corp. used nearly 700 partnerships registered in Bermuda to avoid paying federal taxes."

In fact Enron has been reported as having a total of 881 subsidiaries worldwide; with eight in Bermuda, 692 in the Cayman Islands, 119 in the Turks and Caicos and 43 in Mauritius.

SPI editorial page editor Joanne Byrd defended the piece as accurate, and said its source of information were stories in the New York Times from both David Cay Johnston and David Gonzalez. She added that there had been no correction in the New York Times.

In fact the New York Times correctly cited Bermuda as the domicile of eight Enron subsidiaries.

Ms Byrd would not say who had written the piece but said it was: "a conclusion drawn by the editorial board and a writer was assigned to write the piece."

She referred further questions to SPI journalist Kimberly Mills who told The Royal Gazette that she had sourced information from David Cay Johnston's February 19 New York Times story "Mild tax climate drawing US firms to Bermuda" and had used another New York Times piece from David Gonzalez titled "Enron footprints revive old image of Caymans" as "back-up".

When it was pointed out to Ms Mills that the David Gonzalez piece was on the Cayman Islands and does not mention Bermuda, she conceded the information pertained to Cayman Islands but said she did not think it mattered that much.

"Are you a journalist or a representative of Bermuda," she asked, and in term's of Bermuda's geography she said: "I have a vague understanding of the geography of the area."

Ms Mills concluded the conversation by having said: "I don't need to have any more conversation on this. I am on deadline and I don't need to go any further on this. I have been a journalist for 30 years.

"When I get through with what I am doing, I will look at this. If we made a factual error, we will fix it," she said.

Shadow Finance Minister Dr. Grant Gibbons said the editorial perpetuates Bermuda's "higher profile on the radar screen" after the New York Times piece from David Cay Johnston.

But he added that the SPI editorial was: "much less responsible than the New York Times piece. It appears the press are trying to set a political agenda, even without accurate information."

Dr. Gibbons added that the recent negative focus on Bermuda underscores the need of Government to spend more time in Washington D.C.: "More time should be spent in Washington making sure legislators know what Bermuda is about, particularly in regards to capacity for risk transfer."

Dr. Gibbons said the perception left by the media reports will have consequences: "It will unnecessarily raise our profile in a very negative way with the US legislators without providing any balance to the positive contributions that Bermuda makes."

Calls were made to the Ministry of Finance yesterday but there had been no response by press time.