Banking Secrecy In The Cayman Islands

The offshore jurisdictions are commonly thought to be highly secretive, with banking secrecy being an important part of what those jurisdictions offer to businesses and individuals who use them. For example, in 2000, the US Treasury Department issued an advisory notice stating that extra vigilance was required in doing business in the Cayman Islands: "The Cayman Islands remains committed to strict bank secrecy, outside of a limited suspicious transaction reporting and international cooperation regime".

The Confidential Relationships (Preservation) Law was introduced in the Cayman Islands in 1976. There had been a previous 1966 Law seeking to establish banking secrecy, based on a piece of Bahamian legislation introduced the year before. In proposing the new legislation in 1976, the major concerns were firstly, the then recent Field case in the US (in which a Cayman banker had been served with a subpoena at Miami Airport and was held in contempt for refusing to answer