This comes from the Cayman Compass:
Fighting off last-minute overtures from the United Kingdom on the implementation of a public, centralized beneficial ownership registry for locally registered businesses and potentially trusts, Cayman Islands Premier Alden McLaughlin said Monday that the British Overseas Territories are standing united against such a move.
“Unless such registers become the new global standard…neither we, nor any other overseas territory or Crown dependency intend to go first and intend to have our economic experimented with and potentially damaged,” Premier McLaughlin told the Legislative Assembly.
So, all the UK's tax havens or secrecy jurisdictions are standing together to say they will continue to sell the secrecy that permits tax evasion and crime. And they have confirmed that at the same time they are dedicated to making sure that they prevent free trade, open markets and fair competition because none of them are possible with the opacity that they make available.
Or to put it another way, they want to promote monopoly and criminogenic environments whilst undermining the rule of law whilst being used as the epicentres for the attack on democracy that the so called tax competition that they promote actually represents.
This is their economic experiment. It is an experiment in destroying democratic society.
But at least we know where they stand now.
And if David Cameron does not stand up to them - as the UK can because we have the right to legislate on foreign policy for these places and this is undoubtedly a foreign policy issue - then we also know where he stands.
Hat tip: Robert Palmer, Global Witness
Thanks for reading this post.
You can share this post on social media of your choice by clicking these icons:
You can subscribe to this blog's daily email here.
And if you would like to support this blog you can, here:
Buy me a coffee!
Isn’t it Her Maj the Queen in charge, at least in a titular sense, of both the Crown Dependencies and the Overseas Territories? I’m wondering if anything can be inferred from silence from her on this issue.
Lots, I suspect
Cough cough, isn’t Coutts international centre based in The Caymans? You could ask a former RBS bloke who has a lot to do with the SNP, he might well know. Also, a good man to ask would be a recent Chairman of Coutts.
Remember that Cayman is a tiny place with a total population less than that in a single UK parliamentary constituency, at about 60,000 but many of these are expats. Hence the “government” has a tiny population for draw from and it is unlikely to ever be high quality. While a former first minister was recently found not guilty on a variety of charges, including breach of trust, its low standard can be seen from another recent report in the Compass stating that one minister had shouted at his ministry’s chief office “You aren’t even Caymanian, you are like a piece of f%&king driftwood.” “You know that I can make your life a living hell.” “Get out of my face. Get out of my f&%king office. Get out of my f&%king office now.”
That said while there is scope for improvement, albeit standards are rather higher than some comments would suggest, including in the area of having a public registry, it is perhaps odd to expect a small island to set the standards in this area, when many other countries – including major developed economies that regularly complain about off shore havens, do not?
Everything about Cayman is odd
Almost all decisions, such as this, are made by offshore finance
No doubt the Big 4 were in the lead
odd….. by that do you mean that it has concluded FATCA agreements with the UK and USA and many other tax information agreements?
or has money laundering regulations and a strong court system?
there are many offshore destinations that are far shadier than sunny Cayman. And at least it is up front about its tax regime unlike some countries in, for example, Europe
I mean Cayman is wedded to secrecy that means we will never know if FATCA etc works
And that’s abusive and deliberately so
Transparency behind closed doors is opacity by any other name