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The thing to realise is that for the European countries, money laundering
is no longer the issue. The OECD have large campaign out to force countries
to stop what they call unfair tax competition. The current British labour
govt in England is very keen to keep with this program. Large scale money
laundering is not a concern to England, as the City of London makes a lot
of money from it.
As long as the Labour government is in power, which they probably will be
after the next election, rules are likely to change in the British
Dependencies. While the BVI's financial services administration may still
be under local control, that might not be true in the long term. The UK
already control Anguilla's, Montserrat's and Turks and Caicos. I cant
honestly remember what the story is in the BVI, but I think youre right.
The other places mentioned are under local legislation that is passed in
their local houses, but the actual administration of it is under direct
British control. This happened after a bunch of high profile money
laundering cases in the 80's, when the British Government essentially added
Financial services to their responsibility list. The current British
policy, which is the traditional British policy, is to support the offshore
financial services regimes as a means of gaining economic self sufficiency.
However with the publication of "The White Paper" a year or two back this
started to change. The labour government are willing to take a more French
approach now of integrating them into the UK and subsidising any lost
revenue. So this is a worry. The good thing is that I think that most
of the Dependent Territories, would rather go it alone than take that route.
Also the various regimes affected by the OECD's "Unfair Tax Competition"
policies, seem to be running a fairly successfull media campaign against it.
Concerning the differentiation between Money Laundering and Tax Evation.
They are definitely classified differently in Offshore regimes, but most
"on-shore" regimes classify Tax Evation as money laundering, and will
prosecute any offshore accessories to this "heinous crime" that they can
get their hand on.
Now the real reason and case when you need to worry about full Anonymity is
when dealing with Offshore Institutions managed by US Citizens. This is not
to knock US Citizens, but it seems to be current policy by the feds, to
target these groups. There was the recent case that JPM mentioned about the
offshore seminars provider that was raided.
Worse was the American operator of an Cayman bank, who brought his banks
entire encrypted harddrive + keys to the US to give to the feds as part of
a plea bargain. Fincen (or whoever) were quite excited about this and I
think they had the details of about 2000 US customers right there.
Most US citizens abroad, however enthusiastic and idealistic libertarians
they might be, will at some point whish to come back home for shorter or
longer time. Thats when they will get grabbed and held for ransom for
information. I believe this is where the true danger lies.
-Pelle
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