Wealthy Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney’s tax returns show an array of offshore investments from a recently closed Swiss bank account to funds in the Cayman Islands and a company set up in Bermuda in 1997, named Sankaty High Yield Asset Investors.Sankaty, a Bain Capital affiliate, is registered to Quorum International at one of the Island’s leading law firms, Mello Jones & Martin. Quorum provides administrative services for incorporations.Sankaty Advisors LLC is the credit affiliate of Bain Capital, with some $15 billion assets under management. Bain is the private equity firm Romney founded.Bermuda Registrar of Companies’ records show seven other Sankaty companies registered on the Island, from 1997 though 2001.Romney’s tax returns showed little income from Sankaty High Yield Asset Investors, and a loss of $332.Bowing to pressure, the former Massachusetts governor yesterday released more than 500 pages from a 2010 tax return and a 2011 estimate, showing most of his $21.7 million income came from his investments. He gave nearly $3 million combined to charitable causes, helping reduce his effective tax rate to about 14 percent.One of the richest US presidential candidates ever, Romney could reportedly be worth up to $250 million.His advisers stressed that Romney met all his federal tax obligations, and while some of his investments were routed through affiliate funds there were no actual offshore accounts.An LA Times article from the last time Romney ran for the nomination called the Bermuda and Cayman holdings “shell companies” used to help eligible investors avoid paying US taxes.The article said Romney gained no personal tax benefit from the legal operations. According to the article, Romney served as president and sole shareholder for four years of Sankaty High Yield Asset Investors.The LA Times’ article from December 1997 reported that the Bermuda company “funnelled money into Bain Capital’s Sankaty family of hedge funds, which invests in bonds and other debt issued by corporations, as well as bank loans.”The article further claimed: “Like thousands of similar financial entities, Sankaty maintains no office or staff in Bermuda. Its only presence consists of a nameplate at a lawyer’s office in downtown Hamilton, capital of the British island territory.”The article quotes Marc B. Wolpow, who worked with Romney for nine years at Bain Capital and who set up Sankaty Ltd. in October 1997 without ever visiting Bermuda, as saying: “It’s just a mail drop, essentially. There’s no one doing any work down there other than lawyers.”The article claimed that according to experts: “Investing through what’s known as a blocker corporation in Bermuda protects tax-exempt American institutions, such as pension plans, hospitals and university endowments, from paying a 35 percent tax on what the Internal Revenue Service calls ‘unrelated business income’ from domestic hedge funds that invest in debt.But Romney’s campaign spokesman then said there was nothing improper about the Bermuda arrangement, or in Romney’s investment in the Cayman fund., and in neither case, did Romney gain the ability to defer or avoid paying US taxes.