2016 was the year of Donald Trump, Brexit and extensive
overtime for celebrity obituary writers. The 2016 Atlantic
hurricane season was equally active: the most expensive since 2012
and the deadliest since 2005. The BVI missed out on most of the
tropical storm activity, but (along with most of the offshore
world) had its own storm with the Panama Papers – the leak of
the client database of Panamanian-based corporate service provider
Mossack Fonseca. 2016 was a hard year for BVI registered agents and
a good year for people looking for employment as compliance
officers.
Panama Papers
Starting with the elephant in the room. The BVI, as the largest
International Financial Centre (IFC) by
number of companies, was home for many of the thousands of
companies mentioned in the Panama Papers. This resulted in a lot of
international media attention. Eventually, the real nature of the
Panama Papers began to be heard (but not quite as loudly as the
original story), namely
