Much of the fury in Jersey as a result of the comments made by Deputy Montfort Tadier has focussed on the issue of sham trusts. Senator Philip Ozouf says there are no sham trust in Jersey. He is simply, and straightforwardly, wrong. I made clear in 2006, right at the start of the history of this blog, that
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Over 99% of the blogs on Tax Research UK have been written by me. That’s 8,400 of them over six years at a rate of more than 3.8 a day, no days off allowed. But sometimes an issue requires a blog from someone else. The issue of the interaction of the European Union Savings Tax Directive and the Tax
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The Guardian has begun a mini-series on the Channel Islands today. As it notes in the second part of the series: [T]he most lucrative corner of Jersey’s financial sector is the offshore trusts industry catering to the international super-rich. — With no register of trusts, the Jersey authorities do not know how many such ownership
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I’m grateful for having had an article in the Jersey & Guernsey Law Review from 2010 drawn to my attention. By Filippo Noseda, it discusses The Foundations (Jersey) Law 2009 under the title ‘A Civilian Perspective: Not so plain vanilla and possibly a tad wacky’. It’s not exactly complimentary about the law but perhaps the most damning paragraph is
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France looks to be making interesting moves to tackle offshore trust abuse. There’s a technical note on the issue here. Commentary would be welcome. My superficial look suggests potential problems with non-declaration and the inevitable problems of discretionary settlements with nominee settlors but any thoughts would be welcome.

Fran?ßois Aubert, a grand fromage (big cheese) in French politics and the chair of the OECD Global Forum (peer review group), also has something very interesting to say. Speaking in Les Echos, he said that not enough is being done to tackle the scourge of offshore trusts, adding: Personally, I am favourable to the propositions
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FSA is losing war on insider dealing – Telegraph. Some 60pc of the members of the Chartered Institute for Securities & Investment Institute responding to a survey on whether the Financial Service Authority was winning the war on market abuse said the regulator’s actions had failed to make serious inroads against financial wrongdoing. “The FSA
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The Lawyer magazine has published an article by David Harvey, who is chief executive of the Society of Trust and Estate Practitioners Worldwide. The likely bias in his opinion can be surmised from their name. He wrote: The reality is that trusts are open to official scrutiny and are thus neither ’secret’ nor ’anonymous’. Trusts
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The Swiss French-language daily Le Matin is carrying an interview with Myret Zaki, author of a new book titled "Swiss Banking Secrecy is Dead: Long Live Tax Evasion!" (French only) Setting aside the chauvinistic and insular tone, there are several interesting issues raised in the article that we’d draw your attention to. Firstly, Ms Zaki
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