Guernsey not G20’s target
Friday 20th February 2009, 1:15PM GMT.
GUERNSEY is well above the sort of unregulated economies that will be investigated by the G20 next month, according to the chief minister.
Prime Minister Gordon Brown has said that the G20 nations are planning to focus their attention on jurisdictions without proper tax regulations during its London summit in April.
However, according to Chief Minister Lyndon Trott (pictured), Guernsey has no reason to be concerned.
‘Guernsey is a well-regulated financial centre, committed to playing its part in maintaining international financial stability and transparency and preventing financial crime,’ he said.
‘Indeed, as recent events have shown, where there is financial instability this has been imported into Guernsey from other jurisdictions, rather than vice versa.’
He believes Guernsey is in fact ahead of many other countries when it comes to tax regulations.
‘With regard to consistent regulation, we are ahead of the curve, and have for some time been calling for greater international regulatory co-operation. We are well above some jurisdictions who will be coming under close scrutiny.’
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No matter what Trott says Guernsey and its brethren will always be in the crosshairs of this type of meeting.
They really do not care how well regulated we are, we are just seen as an easy target and a way to win favour with europe and the middle class masses who resent all these rich people taking advantage of the tax system.
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You make a good point there J. Pressure is mounting on Gordon Brown to do something, and high net worth individuals are politically more acceptable to target than big companies with offshore structures. It may take a time coming though, Mr Foot hasnt started his review yet.
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It always amazes me when our political and business leaders say we are ‘transparent’. We, like all financial centres, provide instruments for exactly the opposite reason. To ensure that the money trail is as opaque as possible. Undoubtedly we do our business well and have as many checks and regulations that give us the opportunity to say we are ‘ahead’ of other jurisdictions, but because of the nature of our enterprise then we have to be bracketed with those more ‘behind’ with regulatory practice.
We should embrace the most stringent scrutiny and perhaps hope that we fail certain aspects of an enquiry so that we can then clean ourselves up further. Regardless to our ‘less imperfect’ systems, we cannot say that NOTHING bad happens here, and if it does, we want to find it, find out why, and eliminate those procedures.
Onshore and offshore finance has been blighted by bad practice, not least by the regulators themselves, so by constantly harping on that we should not be included in any ‘bracket’ is far too smug.
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The US is already in negotiation with the UK to force the offshore Islands to conform with UK tax law. This to be implemented by 2011
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