The total myth of the Jersey Finance Industry being a highly respected and transparent industry has been well and truly blown apart by the actions of the Nigerian Government pursuing 20 million pounds of embezzled funds hidden in Jersey bank accounts.
These funds were the proceeds of corrupt deals with motor vehicles carried out by Nigeria’ s late dictator Sani Abacha. In his six year reign Sacha is estimated to have embezzled £2.2 billion of which £200 million is rumoured to still be in Jersey.
The location of this cash was only discovered when a Nigerian bag-man called Raj Bhojwani was jailed for six years for his part in laundering US$43million through his Jersey bank accounts.
Quite obviously the Nigerian Government is very grateful to the Jersey authorities and our Attorney General has stated that it was a pleasure to help a country that had suffered so much through corruption and underlined his department’s commitment to seizing the proceeds of crime and returning them to their rightful country.
All of this, of course, beggars the question: how on earth can the spin masters at Jersey Finance and their acolytes like John Boothman and Geoffrey Grime tell the Jersey people that their largest industry is squeaky clean and totally transparent. If that is so, how come we are accepting money from dodgy businessman acting on behalf of corrupt dictators from poverty- stricken countries? It is shameful , disgusting and totally immoral and besmirches any pride we can have in our island.
We will no doubt be told by those deceitful spin-masters at Jersey Finance that this is a one-off situation and cannot happen again and nothing like that is goes on today.
If you believe that, you must believe in the tooth fairy.
How can we believe that Jersey has a transparent tax regime when what the States does is create legislation written by the finance industry for the benefit of people who don’t live on this island and lets those people who live elsewhere in the world avoid their obligations to the societies where they really live and work.
They are able to do this because Jersey- like all tax havens- have developed a deliberate veil of secrecy which deliberately prevents the tax authorities in the places where they really live and lead their lives from finding out where they have hidden their money.
Of course, these local tax manipulators hide all this behind cleverly worded instruments with names like “tax information exchange agreements” which they sign with various countries to show how co-operative we are when tax authorities from other countries come calling to find out if any of their citizens are using Jersey to hide away their money.
There are two problems with these agreements. First, our authorities do not ask or record the one crucial question that matters—where do you pay tax on your income? The second problem is that we have no experience of operating tax information agreements, as the OECD has pointed out.
As I have said before- and won’t apologise for repeating it- how can Jersey be regarded as being in any way transparent when at least 50% of all personal banks accounts in St. Helier do not disclose the information on income received to their home tax authorities.
How can we say that we have stopped money from sources like the Nigerian money when Jersey totally refuses automatic information exchange under the European Union Savings Directive-the only sure way to stop tax evasion on personal accounts that there is.
How do we know that these illicit funds won’t still be finding their way into Jersey bank accounts when we still cannot find out who owns a Jersey company, who the nominee directors of those companies are really representing and can never see the accounts of a Jersey based company.
It’s about as transparent as a bowl of mud.
The leaders of the Jersey Finance Industry lie through their back teeth to the people of Jersey about how transparent it all is and that they don’t want tax evader’s money. Yet the behaviour of banks does not match this story at all. Remember that BBC flagship programme Panorama last year, when a reporter with a hidden microphone in a briefcase came to Jersey and pretended to be an investor with £4 million to bank. The bank official spent most of the time telling him how he could avoid tax in the UK. Of course, the bank concerned said that this was a “one off” and not the general practice of the bank and the manager had been “reprimanded”. Oh yeah- a one off and a reprimand! The Tooth Fairy again.
How long will it be before we discover that Libya’s dictator Gadaffi hasn’t salted away billions that are deposited in Jersey bank accounts.
Is this all the rantings of a Grosnez bumpkin? May be. But when the head of the UK’s Revenue and Customs tells a Parliamentary C committee that Jersey‘s finance industry is opaque and how difficult it is to break it down, you can rest assured that this Grosnez boy is right.
Of course, that can’t happen because our banking industry is sooooooOOOOOOH transparent.
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