Bermuda snubs Cameron’s plan for company registry
Bermuda’s Minister of Finance, Bob Richards, has snubbed the UK Prime Minister David Cameron’s plan to create public registers of beneficial owners of companies incorporated in Bermuda.
His reasoning behind this update was that this move would be damaging to the economy as Bermuda would lose it’s competitive advantage. He went on to say that Bermuda would not change it’s policies ahead of the UK, US and Canada.
Bermuda is considered as one of the richest UK territories offshore and is the third largest reinsurance center in the world. Richards pointed out that Bermuda has always cooperated with other countries tax authorities when it came to sharing tax information and has over 70 tax information exchange agreements (TIEAs) with other countries. It has also been one of the early adopters of FATCA. He also assured that Bermuda has never been an offshore haven for tax evaders, terrorist financers and fraudsters and has led the way in terms of transparency for the last 75 years.
This update has come as a setback for Cameron who has lobbied all other UK offshore finance centres to enforce public registers of companies. Mr Cameron said earlier this week that it had become increasingly important to push for transparency to tackle the “cancer of corruption that does so much to destroy countries and to increase risks to our own security”.
UK offshore centres have been facing increasing pressure to reveal the names of beneficial owners in a series of global initiatives to crack down on tax evasion and financial crime in the wake of the global financial crisis. The efforts to force offshore centres to make disclosures about ultimate owners of companies has caused resentment because they believe that their standards are higher than countries like the US and UK.
