PANAMA PAPERS EXPOSES BVI AS THE TAX CHEAT HAVEN IT HAS ALWAYS BEEN
ROAD TOWN, Tortola, BVI — A thriving financial services industry that evolved over the last 30 years in the British Virgin Islands made it one of the most popular places in the world to form a corporation, turning a sleepy cluster of Caribbean islands into a global hub of finance.
2022-04-04 12:23:18 - VI News Staff
Now the British Virgin Islands has come under scrutiny like never before thanks to the leak of confidential documents from a Panama-based law firm that specializes in offshore finance.
More than half the 200,000 offshore companies set up by the Mossack Fonseca law firm, including ones owned by the father of British Prime Minister David Cameron and relatives of Chinese leader Xi Jinping, were registered in the BVI, according to reports coordinated by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists.
BVI officials have sought in recent days to address the reports while defending financial oversight in a territory where incorporated entities outnumber residents by a ratio of more than 10-to-1 and blue-suited lawyers and bankers on the streets of Tortola often outnumber tourists.
“If you see articles that say jurisdictions like the BVI are facilitators of illegitimate activity, that is incorrect,” Financial Secretary Neil Smith said Friday. “Yes, it occurs, but it also occurs in jurisdictions that are not seen as offshore financial centers.”
The British Virgin Islands, an overseas British territory of about 30,000 people near Puerto Rico, is the world’s leading center for company incorporation, according to the Tax Justice Network. At least one million enterprises have been incorporated since 1984. There were 450,000 active ones at the end of last year, according to the Financial Services Commission.
The problem, as critics of offshore financial secrecy see it, is that the BVI and other jurisdictions enable the hiding of the true owners of companies in ways that allow corruption and criminality to flourish.
“We’re not saying that shell companies or tax shelters need to be done away with, we’re saying that more of this needs to be out in the open,” said Mark Hays, a senior adviser with Global Witness.
The Tax Justice Network says the BVI has a “lax, flexible, ask-no-questions, see-no-evil company incorporation,” system. “The BVI has long been linked to wave after wave of scandals,” the organization said in a report that ranked the BVI at number 21 on its financial secrecy index. The U.S. was No. 3 and Switzerland No. 1.
But the Tax Justice Network also notes that the British Virgin Islands has made significant improvements.
An amendment to the territory’s Business Companies Act that went into effect Jan. 1 requires companies to keep their beneficial ownership information within the BVI. There is also a new requirement for companies to file a list of their registered directors with the Financial Services Commission. The changes are expected to help curtail money laundering and other criminal activities.