Discussing bank confidentiality in offshore finance at a Eugene Dupuch Law School seminar at the British Colonial Hilton, Sept. 19, Dr. Rosemarie B. Antoine said that the expanded definition was designed to induce cooperation by offshore centres.
“There is no contention to the idea that money launderers should be brought to justice,” she said, “but what I question is the way in which the scope of money laundering is constantly broadening.”
Dr. Antoine, a senior lecturer at the University of the West Indies, who wrote a landmark doctoral thesis on “Legal issues In Offshore Finance”, said that offshore countries were cooperating against crime before the initiatives by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development and the Financial Action Task Force.
“Our courts have always assisted in the fight against crime as we have…in our own statutes, avenues for disclosure in appropriate circumstances,” she emphasised.
Also presently the Programme Director for the Masters of Laws Programme, Dr. Antoine questioned some of the decisions made by the lawmakers and courts of some offshore jurisdictions in response to the blacklisting by the OECD and FATF.
A recent trend, she observed, is that some smaller countries, in an effort to avoid adverse publicity and offending the developed democracies, have opted to kowtow to them; but,
“Is that law or is it policy?” she asked.
Many problems were due to misconceptions about offshore centres, she said.
Dr. Antoine firmly supported bank confidentiality as a legitimate principle, and “one well worth fighting for.”
The notion that confidentiality is inherently “evil and corrupt,” is false and should be discarded, she said.
And, offshore centres are not the only jurisdictions to value confidentiality, she noted, as it was an important concept in commerce and considered a norm in other business practices. “None of us would want to encourage unlawful acts or support crime but this is not sufficient to prejudice the principle of confidentiality,” she said.
According to Dr. Antoine, smaller offshore centres were blacklisted because they were considered more vulnerable to being influenced, “Despite the clear evidence coming from the onshore countries themselves that the biggest money launderers are not here, but are in fact in New York, London and Russia.”
Of the move to include tax matters in the list of money laundering offences, she agreed that, in light of the events of Sept. 11, the initiative was understandable, but certain legal implications could arise.
She affirmed that despite continuing OECD and FATF initiatives and policy decisions made by some offshore jurisdictions, “I still believe we have very strong confidentiality precepts and we still have the scope for confidentiality.”
By Martella Matthews, The Nassau Guardian
