THEY have fewer than 30,000 inhabitants, but on paper the British Virgin Islands (BVI) pulled in $92 billion in foreign direct investment in 2013. Only the United States, China and Russia did better. Most of it went to the islands’ half-a-million shell companies. Offshore fees account for 60% of the budget.This is an industry that prizes discretion. So when the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) began reporting last April on around 2.5m leaked documents that emanated from two offshore providers, shell-company owners were not the only ones to be livid. Officials feared loss of business to Hong Kong and Singapore: company registrations in the BVI were down by 23% in the final quarter of 2013. “The ICIJ has done us a lot of damage,” the premier’s wife told Le Monde in January.The islands have now come up with cybercrimes legislation that slaps a prison term of up to 20 years and a possible $1m fine on anyone, in any country, who leaks or publishes leaked information about a BVI offshore company—even if that information comes from a computer in Boston or Beijing. Passed by the House of Assembly this month, the bill needs the signature of the British-appointed governor.He should send it back. People have a right to financial privacy if they have done nothing wrong but the law makes no provision for a public-interest defence....
from The Economist: The Americas http://ift.tt/1jRilrf
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