24/06/2025
While Shawe was relieved when he finally got full control of the company, he was not happy buying it at auction, which he calls “tax-stupid” and an “unfair tax burden.” That’s when he hightailed it to . The U.S. territory has tax advantages that allow certain individuals—those who have relocated to the island in the last decade, donate $10,000 a year to a local nonprofit and establish residency, all of which applied to Shawe—to avoid taxes (including federal ones) on capital gains, dividends or interest. As four Congresspeople wrote in a 2023 letter, they are “tax benefits that Americans could not obtain anywhere else in the world.”
Shawe also reincorporated TransPerfect in Nevada in 2018, due to his growing frustration with the Delaware Court of Chancery, where he says he faced hundreds of millions in attorney’s fees connected to the TransPerfect litigation that “put the company at risk.” It’s part activism, part revenge campaign: Shawe has sued attorney Robert Pincus, the custodian in the TransPerfect sale, at least three times—mostly over legal fees related to the sale—and appealed the rulings more than a dozen times between 2017 and 2024. (Most have been dismissed and in judgments as recent as last week; Pincus declined to comment.) Shawe was also the biggest donor to Delaware politics in 2024, giving more than $1 million to a political action committee and helping get the state’s current governor elected. Further, he solely funds advocacy organization Citizens for Judicial Fairness, aimed at making the chancery court more transparent—and less powerful.
