Dart’s waivers exceed $11M

(CNS): The public purse is light by well-over $11 million on the development of the Kimpton Hotel on Seven Mile Beach by Dart Realty and its construction company DECCO due to duty and fee waivers. The results of an FOI request by North Side MLA Ezzard Miller also show that the developer was given the red card permit to construct the hotel well after work had started on the building, something the independent member said no one else would get away with. Concerned that government authorities are simply overlooking infractions because of the size of the developer, Miller told CNS that enough is enough and government had to stop bending rules to suit powerful individuals. 

“We have got to put a stop to this. As government bends over backwards for these developers, Caymanians get nothing in return,” he said.

Miller pointed to the massive waivers given to Dart on the hotel project, which he said he did not believe were justified. He queried exactly how many jobs had been created on the hotel project for local workers and exactly how Caymanians would benefit from the more than $7 million waived.

The FOI request, which was granted in full and given to Miller within the lawful timeframe, revealed that planning fees of almost a quarter million dollars were waived for Dart’s development, as well as a whopping $2.65 million waiver on infrastructure fees. In addition, almost $1.7 million on building permit fees were scrapped and over $2.7million was waived in affordable housing fees, which Miller described as "outrageous".

However, answering a question in the Legislative Assembly on Thursday posed by East End member Arden McLean about the size of the waivers so far, Finance Minister Marco Archer said that, as at 26 November, the concessions regarding fees, duties and taxes had now reached $11.8 million. In addition to the revelations in the FOI response, there was also $2.4 million in stamp duty waivers, and import duty waivers of more than $1.2 million. 

Arden McLean asked if the cost of the waivers were to offset the cost of the road. Archer responded that, to the best of his understanding, he believed this was the case.

Although Dart has committed to a major project that is expected to generate jobs and which includes covering the cost of the Easterly Tibbetts Highway Extension into West Bay, in addition to the significant duty and fee concessions, the developer has received and a stretch of the West Bay Road, turning a huge swathe of his land into beachfront property, multiplying its value by many millions of dollars.

As government continues to negotiate with Dart over the ForCayman Investment Alliance, which was entered into by the UDP administration, the developer is still receiving significant duty waivers, despite the minister of finance’s promise when he came to office that he was going to examine the duty and fee waivers and put an end to the government giveaway.

However, when answering the East End member's questions, Archer said that he could not predict how muchwould be given away to Dart as a result of the agreement.

Miller declared that this government was continuing on with the disaster created by the former administration.

“The ForCayman Investment Alliance was the worst thing to happen to this country,” he told CNS, as he pointed to the massive fee waivers and the infractions that the planning authorities were simply ignoring. “How did Dart get a red permit weeks after he had already started the hotel?” he asked, noting that a local trying to build his house without a red permit would have been stopped. Miller even queried whether the planning department would have bothered to issue a permit at all if he had not made the FOI request.

In the wake of the controversial planning law changes, which government ushered through the Legislative Assembly recently, Miller said he is exceptionally concerned that the changes are all designed to meet demands of developers and that laws are being manipulated for these investors against the best interests of the local population..

Given the massive waivers that Dart has received, Miller said he wanted to know exactly how many Caymanians were given jobs on the Kimpton project and what the people of Cayman are getting for their $11 million.

According to the premier, half of the people working in government earn less than $3,300 per month. The duties and fees on the Dart project if they had been collected could have created almost 300 jobs in the public sector.

See FOI request posted below

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Charities demand action against OTs at JMC

(CNS): The Cayman Islands delegation along with other overseas territory representatives in the UK this week for the annual Joint Ministerial Counsel meeting with the FCO were greeted by demonstrators from UK charities that want to see more action against offshore secrecy. Christian Aid campaigners say that a year after what it described as “Britain’s tax havens” agreed to consider lifting the secrecy around who really owns the companies domiciled in the territories have made “alarmingly little progress”. As leaders from Bermuda and the British Virgin Islands as well as Cayman met in London the charity said government needs to fulfill the UK Prime Minister’s promise to end secrecy and “set a new standard for transparency”.

Joseph Stead, Senior Economic Justice Adviser at Christian Aid, said: “Over the last year, so little has changed that it is hard to believe the Overseas Territories were genuine in their commitment to consider public registers of who owns companies. In April the Prime Minister reminded them that ‘the rest of the world is watching’ but they seem to be stalling in the hope that their promises will be forgotten.”

At last year’s meeting of the Joint Ministerial Council the territories had agreed to hold public consultations on creating public registers of who really owns companies but there has been no reports or conclusions made public.

The issue has been one of significant controversy not just in Cayman but in other financial service centres as well. Although, Wayne Panton, the financial services minister has initiated a consultation process he has made it clear that there will be not be a public register accessible by all in Cayman before the on-shore jurisdictions do the same thing. Cayman has argued persistently that unlike the US, the UK and other onshore financial centres, the Cayman Islands already collects the information regarding beneficial ownership. However, the charities continue to note that it may be collected but it is rarely accessible.

With none of the territories coming up with a plan on how they intend to make that information more accessible after some ten months of consultation the charities say it is not good enough.

“It’s clear that secretly owned companies in the Overseas Territories are used for international corruption, money laundering and tax evasion,” Stead stated in a release from the charity.

“The BVI, the Caymans (sic) and Bermuda are in the World Bank’s top 20 jurisdictions for cases of grand corruption. They need to be among the first to change. The failure to clean up the Overseas Territories risks being a blot on the Prime Minister’s record of getting tough on tax dodging. While the Overseas Territories stall, the UK is one of a growing number of EU countries supporting public registries across the EU to counter money laundering." 
 
The legislation to create a public register in the UK was scheduled to be debated in the House of Lords Tuesday and there are concerns in the offshore industry that the pressure from the UK will increase on the territories to do the same once Britian comes up with a publicly accessible register.

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