Cayman Islands Hits Back At Columnist's Claims

Tom Burroughes

31 May 2013

Editor’s note: The promotional organisation for the Cayman Islands’ financial industry has written a sharply worded defence of the jurisdiction after it was attacked by Simon Jenkins, a high-profile newspaper columnist in the UK’s Guardian newspaper, on 22 May.

In a letter signed by Gonzalo Jalles, chief executive of Cayman Finance, and which that organisation says was not published by the Guardian, he slams as “irresponsible” claims that the Caribbean jurisdiction is a repository of laundered money and other illicit finance.

The letter was emailed to this publication and others and is reproduced here in full. The senders of the letter claim the article has not - as of the time of publication - been published by the Guardian. As always, this website does not necessarily endorse all of the opinions expressed in such an item, and is grateful to readers if they wish to add to the debate.

Simon Jenkins’ article “First, David Cameron should bring his own tax havens to book” (May 22) has an alarming number of inaccuracies.

Jenkins claims that Cayman is “the worst culprit, has a government accountable to Britain that enforces banking secrecy, levies zero company tax and is consequently home to the biggest money-laundering and tax-evading operation this side of Dubai”.

For a start Mr Jenkins should do his basic homework. Cayman does not have bank secrecy and has not had for a very long time. Cayman privacy laws are not significantly different to those of the UK, US or any G20 country.

In regards to money laundering, the Financial Action Task Force is the multinational body that evaluates a country’s performance. Cayman rates in line with France and very close to the UK, ahead of many so called on-shore jurisdictions. This information is readily accessible online.

The Cayman Islands government take a tough stance on tax evasion by implementing the European Union Saving Tax Directive, Financial Action Task Force mutual evaluation, the peer review process of the OECD Global Forum on Tax Transparency, and signing over 30 Tax Information Exchange Agreements, some originally signed over 20 years ago.

As was noted in The Guardian on 2 May, Chancellor George Osborne revealed that all British Overseas Territories with significant financial centres have signed up to the UK government's strategy on global tax transparency and indeed the Cayman Islands led the way on this initiative.

This strategy means that OTs automatically share information bilaterally with the UK and multilaterally within the G5 and whichever additional country joins the initiative. Much greater levels of information about bank accounts will be exchanged on a multilateral basis as part of a move towards a new global standard, including the beneficiary of the account even if such account is not in their name.

On 15 March, Cayman’s minister for financial services announced our commitment to enter into a FATCA Model 1 Intergovernmental Agreement with the US for the automatic exchange of tax information, together with a parallel UK agreement adhering to the same timetable.

Since 2005 the Cayman Islands have engaged in automatic exchange of tax information with all EU Member States for the purposes of the EU Savings Directive. Cayman is committed to build on this experience by joining the pilot multilateral automatic exchange of tax information, announced recently by the UK, France, Germany, Italy and Spain.

It is deeply irresponsible for a writer and former editor of Mr Jenkins’ calibre to plunge into areas where he clearly has no technical knowledge, and without undertaking basic research.

We remain available to help him or any of your reporters understand the truth about Cayman and its success.