Blum presents ideas for Caribbean’s future at UCCI
(CNS): Jack Blum, one of the United States' leading white-collar attorneys specialising in money laundering, will be the next guest in the University College of the Cayman Islands' Distinguished Lecture Series. Blum, who is an expert in offshore financial issues, has been at the centre of some major international cases, from the Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI) to General Noriega's drug trafficking and Lockheed's overseas bribes. He will be speaking about the economic future for Caribbean islands being led by remittances and the need for a world with open borders for people as well as trade and services.
Blum believes that the world is on the way to preventing the use of sovereignty to block effective enforcement of criminal and tax law. No long term economic plan, he says, can be developed that assumes a future based on legal arbitrage in financial services. During his presentation Blum will pose the question that if arbitrage is out, what can the Islands doto survive economically?
As he says that the economic future of the Caribbean is tied to US, Canadian, and UK immigration law and policy as so many of their people live there. The key source of income for the islands in the future will be remittance money and a free flow of people and open borders with the US, Canada and the UK will enable that future.
Blum has worked for law firms in the areas of bank and securities firm compliance, congressional investigations, international financial crime, money laundering and offshore tax evasion. He has been an expert witness and consultant for various US government agencies and private clients. He served for many years as a US Senate staff attorney, where he was involved in numerous well-known investigations.
Blum has been a consultant to the United Nations Centre on Transnational Corporations, the United Nations Office of Drug Control and Crime Prevention, and served as the chair of the experts group on international asset recovery, which was convened by the United Nations Centre for Drug Control and Crime Prevention. He often testifies about money laundering and tax evasion before United States congressional committees.
The lecture will take place in Sir Vassel Johnson Hall on the UCCI campus on Thursday, 14 November at 6:00pm.
The UCCI Distinguished Lecture Series is part of pre-event activities related to the UCCI 2014 International Caribbean Conference on Ethics, Values and Morality. For further information, visit www.ucciconference.ky or Facebook.
Category: Local News
Jack Blum is Chairman of Tax Justice Network USA. It is extraordinary that he has been invited to deliver this lecture in light of TJN's continued attacks on the Cayman Islands – attacks based on ignorance and hypocrasy: see CNS's report today "Cayman 4th in Secrecy League". Poor judgment by the UCCI to give him this platform.
UCCI is an educational institution. People learn by being exposed to and digesting varying points of view. I applaude the School for this choice. We do not have to agree with an individules point of view to learn form them.
We should all go there with signs and protest, just as the tax network fools like to do to us. Karma is a heck of a thing.
Cayman has had a part to play in all the major international corporate frauds of recent years.
A. That's not true. E.g. Allen Stanford had nothing to do with Cayman. No Madoff–related entity was incorporated in Cayman, and neither Bernard Madoff or any Madoff company provided direct services to any Cayman Islands–regulated fund. Cayman had no part in the Olint ponzi scheme. These are three of the biggest and best-known recent international frauds.
B. Such involvement as it has had has been peripheral. The real fraud took place onshore.
People like you hope that by frequent repetition lies will become truth.
Lots of Cayman entities were integral to Madoff. Frauds like Olympus had Camyan companies at the heart of the wrongdoing. Of course the miscreants were onshore, because that is how exempt companies work, but the Caymans provided the secrecy mechanisms, together with its fellow secrecy jurisdictions, to allow these frauds to happen.
That simply isn't true re Madoff. You did have Cayman Funds which invested in Madoff's companies if that's you mean but that makes them victims rather than perpetrators of fraud. The fraud had nothing to do with Cayman.
Blum blithely condemns 'arbitrage', but for as long as there are different countries/states there will be different tax rates and punters will shop around. London, Delaware and New York are all 'tax havens' to someone; in fact, UK Chancellor George Osborne was in China two weeks ago trying to entice its banks to London with its advantageous tax regime! Countries regularly offer incentives to businesses to set up within their boundaries. Montreal offers generous tax breaks to do so, and Blum need look no further than the tussle for business incentives between Texas and Californa.
So he's whistling in the wind. Cayman has done nothing wrong except be a nil tax (ha ha) jurisdiction, which means it is hated by everyone else. But it is a little jurisdiction which has nobody at Government level competent enough to protect us and explain the situation. XXX
You were 100% correct up to here: "…Government level competent enough to protect us and explain the situation".
That's not the issue. It is not that the UK and US don't understand the situation it is that they don't care and we have no power to defend ourselves. Cayman Finance/Tony Travers have been explaining for some time now, and the new Minister for Financial Services, Mr. Panton and his Councillor Mr. McTaggart are certainly competent enough.
All this time and he still has not even the slightest understanding of the Cayman Islands financial services model.
You are right, it is much worse than even he thinks.
Jack is just like the TAxcJustice Network boys – they prfer to believe what they want to believe, factsto the contrary – otherwise their raison'detre would evaporate. Still, half minded top go along – suggesting that the Caribbean turn themselves into a dormitory village to supply the first world with labour should go down like a house on fire!