Letter to the Financial Times 7th April 2016.
Sir, Much as Jeremy Corbyn, the Labour party leader, may
secretly admire Lord Palmerston, sending a gunboat to the Cayman
Islands is constitutionally impermissible ("Cameron accused of
backing down on tax havens", FT.com, April 5). The Cayman
Islands are internally self-governing. Nor on any factual analysis
is it necessary to do so.
The reason the Cayman Islands do not feature in the Panama
Papers is that you would need to be unsound of mind to use the
jurisdiction for any form of improper tax structuring. Because the
British and Cayman Islands governments have set the global standard
on the issue of tax transparency, HM Revenue & Customs, the
Internal Revenue Service and the tax and law enforcement
authorities of all EU jurisdictions, among others, have complete
and unrestricted access to all beneficial ownership information on
Cayman structures.
