The Tax Justice Network (TJN) has accused the UK government of wanting to use Brexit to cut regulations in order to attract dirty money. After the European Union added the Cayman Islands, a UK overseas territory, to its list of tax havens, TJN chief executive Alex Cobham said: “The UK government is threatening not ‘Singapore on Thames’ but ‘Cayman on steroids’ – a reckless race to the bottom on tax and financial regulation, in pursuit of global dirty money.”
“The EU has been clear that this will threaten the City’s market access, and while the UK would ultimately benefit from rebalancing its economy away from finance, to go down this road while manufacturing is already exposed to a major shock risks aggravating the economic and human costs of Brexit quite needlessly.”
“The EU has blacklisted the crown jewel of the UK’s tax haven network while letting other major tax havens off the hook. Cayman is one of the world’s greatest supplier of financial secrecy according to our Financial Secrecy Index.”
“The EU’s blacklisting of Cayman signals the end of carte blanche for UK secrecy post-Brexit, which has used the City of London and its network of Overseas Territories and Crown Dependencies to siphon and launder huge sums of dirty money from around the world for decades.”
