NEW - British Virgin Islands publishing a PUBLIC register of the owners of its offshore companies. [View all]

BOOM! The British Virgin Islands publishing a PUBLIC register of the owners of its offshore companies. Dictators, crooks, Mobsters, and spies are all...worried today. Trust me.

This will be...NOTEWORTHY.

The British Virgin Islands, a popular tax haven where secrecy rules have long attracted criminals, will introduce a public register of owners of companies created on the island.

The BVI, an overseas territory of the United Kingdom located east of Puerto Rico, has a well-documented history of being misused by drug traffickers, corrupt politicians, and tax evaders. Successive scandals, including exposés by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, have placed the BVI under pressure to increase transparency.

Andrew Fahie, BVI’s premier and minister of finance, told the island’s House of Assembly in September that his government would work “towards a publicly accessible register of beneficial ownership for companies,” albeit “subject to reservations.” Liz Sugg, the U.K. minister with responsibility for territories like the BVI, later tweeted that the public register would be adopted by 2023.

“Every time that there’s a global exposé on illicit finance, the BVI’s name comes up,” said Ava Lee, anti-corruption campaign leader from the nonprofit Global Witness. “The recent leak of files from FinCEN showed that at least 20% of the occasions when banks in the US raised suspicions of money laundering involved BVI companies, and half the companies exposed by the Panama Papers were registered there.”