Jude Scott, chief executive officer (CEO) of Cayman Finance has said that all financial centres around the world should implement anti-corruption practices, such as data disclosures, when necessary - not just a few like the Cayman Islands.
“The difficulty is when you start carving out standards for certain countries that aren’t applicable to others then what we create is really a bucket that we patch some holes but we have other large holes that are very leaky,” said the CEO.
Scott was speaking in an interview on a British television channel, Sky News. He was visiting the UK for the Anti-Corruption Summit, held in London in May.
The host, Ian King mentioned that UK Labour Party Leader Jeremy Corbyn recently said the Cayman Islands would not make public any of the data disclosures as UK Prime Minister David Cameron had hoped. He asked Scott if this was the case.
Scott informed him that Cayman constantly tries to ensure that it is providing the information to the appropriate authorities whether it is tax authorities or law enforcement.
He said: “For example we’ve signed up as an early adopter of the common reporting standards, which will give automatic information exchange to tax authorities in over 90+ countries.
“Our focus has been for many, many years focusing on having good, strong transparency and corporation standards and so we’ve continued to evolve those.”
Scott also said he believes tackling illegitimate transactions through appropriate channels is the best way to collectively address them.
King questioned if Cayman already has mechanisms for information exchange “in private”, what makes the country hesitant about public disclosures.
Scott answered: “I think when we look at it we’ll also see, for example, from the anti-corruption summit is that the important thing is to make sure that we are establishing standards that are able to be implemented by all financial centres around the world.”
He said he hopes the summit will result in collaboration.
“For example, Cayman has had in place very strong transparency practices for probably 15 and 20 years, Scott continued. “Really having a seat at the table to be able to share some of those best practices and actually contribute to the conversation so that we can help shape it going forward. Because we believe that good strong standards like what we have in Cayman are important for us to have, but implement globally."
Cayman Finance, Jude Scott, UK Government, Anti-corruption, Sky News, Ian King, David Cameron, Jeremy Corbyn, Global, UK, Cayman Islands
