Tax havens: evil under the sun?

Offshore financial centres have both their supporters as well as passionate detractors. Adam Samuel gives an outsider’s view on tax issues raised by the Panama Papers.

Adam Samuel BA LLM DipPFS MCISI FCIArb Certs CII (MP&ER) Barrister and Attorney may be contacted at adamsamuel@aol.com. His book, ‘Complaints and Compensation: a Guide to the Financial Services Market’, is available from his website, www.adamsamuel.com.

Both general and technical press is appropriately agog with excitement at the revelations from the Panama Papers. Lawyers with decent memories and good home libraries were not that astonished that a law firm somewhere near the Caribbean had been helping the good, the great and downright dishonest to shelter their money in a variety of ways. Readers of John Grisham’s 1991 second novel, The Firm, would have known what was happening. That novel, written by an attorney in the United States, describes a nightmare outfit that operated as a cover for a Mafia family’s operations. The material handed to the FBI in that novel could have operated as a forerunner for the Panama Papers.