Tax Justice Network: Lies, damned lies and tax haven nonsense.
John Christensen has had enough of tax haven abuse of the word 'transparent'.
So have I. I get very irritated every time I hear cayman claim it is transparent.
Let's be clear: getting information out of Cayman is nigh on impossible. How is that transparent? It's about as transparent as a brick wall.
Which reminds me of my six year old son's favourite joke at the moment:
What invention let's you see through walls?
Answer:
A window
That's what we need Cayman: windows. Big ones, with glass in them, and which open so we come in and get what we need.
You haven't got them. You've only got bricks. So, with all due respect, stop talking about being transparent when it is glaringly obvious that you are anything but.
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The Isle of Man claims to be transparent’ but it has no Freedom of Information legislation so getting any ‘transparency’ out of it is like getting blood out of a stone. It just says: “what you are asking is confidential”
The article warned journalists “When a PR person representing a tax haven claims it is transparent, simply ask them to take you straight away to the office of the registrar of trusts – and see how far that gets you.” How can one get in touch with the Registrar of Trusts in the U.K., and where is their office located?
Teepat
The UK is a tax haven
I demand the same here
Richard
Well, can you tell me the address of a registrar of trusts anywhere in the world?
It’s impossible to have a registrar of trusts because a trust, by definition, need not have any formality in its creation. If I decide to do some charity work in the Sudan and I say to a colleague “can you look after my stuff while I am away and if I get killed there’s a letter in my draw saying what to do with it” I have created a trust.
What you are really aiming for is a system whereby everyone in the world needs to create a public record of everything that they own or have rights to. Which is fine as long as you have a liberal government with respect for the rule of law. But what if you had such a record in the UK in the 1970’s, Germany in the 1930, Iran in 1979? Possibly even the UK in 2009? Anyone with any wealth at all would know that there was a risk the State would confiscate it for its own, short term convenience.
Take Fred Goodwin. I don’t like the guy, but we have had politicians effectively saying his assets should be taken away, because public opinion is more important than the law. Does that not send shivers down your spine?
So what you really want is an end to people being wealthy. That’s fine, but it is, more or less, communism.
And perhaps people being able to maintain secrecy about their wealth actually supports democracy, by preventing a government taking a short term, populist measure like simply seizing the assets of the rich or unpopular.
Paul. Really! No the labour government in the 1970s wasn’t very good, but to compare it with the nazis and with the Ayatollahs is a bit off the mark, isn’t it?
Fred Goodwin. People in parliament have made some comments in anger. If they weren’t angry, something would really be wrong. But nothing has happenned to “Sir” Fred. Nothing is going to happen, sadly.
At what point does privacy stop benefitting democracy and start undermining it.
Trusts. Would the trust you have descibed stand up in a court of law if it were challenged?
“Would the trust you have described stand up in a court of law if it were challenged?”
Yes.
Look at the comments on this site – people saying good riddance to the likes of Guy Hands etc. Only last week Richard quoted Peter Singer, who said if you bought bottled water you had money you did not need.
Ask yourself this question – if you were wealthy, with say £100m+ of assets – would you be happy for the government to know where they all were?
Do you really think it compeletely beyond the bounds of possibility that a Labour government would say:
“nobody needs more than (say) £10m, and it is right that the wealthy should shoulder the burden of the recession, given they are the ones that benefitted from the boom. Therefore we announce today that we will seize any assets owned by any UK resident above that amount, and use it to target benefits that will make a real difference to ordinary hard working families”?
@Paul I am always suspicious of the way officialdom uses ‘secrecy’ to hide what is in the public interest, or otherwise ought to be in the public domain. I distinguish a difference between ‘secrecy’ & ‘confidentiality’ where the latter is legitimate. Both are used to avoid ‘transparency’.
Trusts can be used – so they frequently are used – as ‘secret’ vehicle to conduct illegal transactions and that is an abuse. The financial institutions that set them up for questionable reasons use engineered jargon to make them look so respectable that they need a forensic acountant to disclose the jiggery-pokery in them.
Interestingly, last week I actually invoked the Freedom of Information Act 2000 to obtain some information that I believed I had a right to know. The reply from the government agency was “I am able to inform you that there was a meeting on (date) which was chaired by (person) accompanied by (that’s confidential).. You have asked for a copy of the Minutes, & I have to inform you that they are confidential within the terms of the Freedom of Information Act”. In other words what I was seeking (names of persons attending the meeting & the decisions of the meeting) were in effect not only classed as ‘confidential’ but were in fact ‘secret’! The agency’s website spoke glowingly of ‘transparency’ in its ‘activity’ and ‘openess’ in its relationship with the public. 🙄
I am a great admirer of whistleblowers 😛
Jim,
I agree with your position. But the crux of the matter is that jurisdictions such as Jersey, Guernsey and the Isle of Man require any person acting as trustee to be regulated and to act in compliance with the relevant laws and regulations. These regulations require such trustees to file reports with the police if they have reasonable groudns for suspecting a transaction is being made for illegal purposes, which includes tax evasion in another country. If you fail to do so, you will be closed down and or fined. Which has happened in Jersey: look at Anchor or Caversham.
Compare this to other jurisdictions. The Hosue of Commons select committee themselves say the stadnards in the crown dependencies exceed those in the UK or US. In Switzerland, anything goes. In Singapore, tax evasion in a third country is not an offence that needs to be reported.
Attacking Jersey and Guernsey (as is commonly done on this site) is a bit like complaining that your house is cold because your triple glazed windows should be quadruple glazed, when elsewhere, you are leaving doors open and haven’t insulated the roof.
Paul
I daresay that people with the sort of money would not like government to know about it. But, government should answer to a broader range of people. Not just the very wealthy.
Actually, I do think your suggestion is very very unlikely. Beyond the bounds of possibility? I think so, yes.
So what if people say good riddance to Guy Hands? Why shouldn’t they?
“So what if people say good riddance to Guy Hands? Why shouldn’t they?”
Perhaps the people who clean his house, cook for him, drive his cars, provide his wine and helicopters etc etc might disagree. Regardless of whether he is a nice chap or not, regardless of whether he pays as much tax as you would like or not, regardless of the merits of EMI as a business, when an economy is contracting, I’d have thought it unwise to be saying good riddance to those who spend and employ freely.
Hi Paul 😐 …I accept the the Crown Dependencies of Jersey, Guernsey & the IoM are desperate to be seen as the best behaved boys in the school for scoundrels. 😛 However, I am not convinced that right now the conduct of business in these Isles is above reproach. For example, are you telling me that all accounts have names rather than numbers? And how is it that there are accounts in the Isle of Man that are only under scrutiny now because they have been identified as ‘dodgy’ by a forensic accountant who has uncovered them whilst doing an investigation into corruption in the Caribbean?
Of course the IoM banks and the Government are using their well-rehearsed script to say wide eyed: “Oh! we didn’t know they were dodgy!” Regulatory bodies don’t know if they don’t have the eyes to see ‘black holes’! Besides, how can you really trust a regulatory body that has 3 bank managers in it? 🙄