Human rights now a concern with publicly accessible registers of beneficial ownership
Minister for Financial Services Lorna Smith has announced that the BVI will not push to implement publicly accessible registers of beneficial ownership in the financial services industry, despite previous promises to do so.
Beneficial owners are persons who enjoy the benefits of ownership in a company even though the title of the company is in another entity’s name. Financial services jurisdictions such as the BVI are being pushed to make these names public as it is believed this will prevent many people from hiding wealth in offshore jurisdictions.
In a recent statement, Minister Smith said the government will not rush ahead to implement publicly accessible registers because of last year’s ruling by the European Court of Justice (ECJ), which said such registers could infringe on people’s human rights.
Minister Smith said while the Virgin Islands does not fall within the ambit of the ECJ, they will take the court’s judgement into consideration to help minimise the risk of legal challenges on human rights grounds.
“Transparency is key to this but so is respect for international law. The government will continue to undertake the technical work of designing and building systems that deliver on its commitment to implement a Publicly Accessible Register of Beneficial Ownership, consistent with the standards to be identified in the implementation review of the EU’s Fifth Anti-Money Laundering Directive. But this will be done in a way that ensures its human rights obligations are met,” Minister Smith stated.
After the ECJ ruling last year, many financial services jurisdictions breathed a sigh of relief, as they were no longer forced to publicise the names of company owners in their financial services industries. Implementing public registers of beneficial ownership is just one of many ways being used by countries and international groups to get wealthy individuals and corporations to pay taxes on wealth they have stored in offshore jurisdictions.
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I class she wid Maynard
Lorna in your corner tell them man geh their MS! Because how will it not just be putting BVI at a disadvantage if the other players in the industry don’t have to do it as well?
Guuuuuurl…!!!!! Stop trying to help hide ayo names behind those SHELL (don’t mean conch) companies that you all have gotten so accustomed to using. I recall during the COI that a former member of government and a familiar person to you, listed more companies than letters of the ALPHABET that he owned. That made me question what are the others that are not known to us!
The tide is turning and you might get rolled over in the surf . Watch out as another Panama Papers scandal don’t hit a bit too close to home…..
Has also delivered a judgment stating that a public register will infringe BVI constitutional rights. Very unlikely that this will be imposed by the UK now.