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Jersey: £0.5m States Funding For New Finance Body

Lisa Ugur, Tax-news.com, London

08 August 2000

It was announced last week that Jersey, together with its fellow British dependencies Guernsey and the Isle of Man, may reach a deal with the OECD in order to be removed from the Paris-based organisation's blacklist of harmful tax havens. Jersey, like other jurisdictions subjected to the OECD's "naming and shaming" initiative, has been striving to defend its reputation in the face of the OECD's controversial June report, and now it has been announced that the island will have a new finance body to promote and defend Jersey's financial industry.

The new body, which will work parallel to the existing Jersey Financial Services Commission, has the working title Promoco. It is due to receive about £500,000 from the Jersey States in its first year, and subsequently will be equally funded by the government and by voluntary donations from the finance industry itself. A chief executive officer has not yet been appointed but could be in place by the end of this year.

Promoco is, however, not simply the product of recent attacks on Jersey's finance sector. There have been repeated calls for the creation of such a body following the Edwards Report, published in November 1998, the recommendations of which aimed to improve financial regulation and counter money laundering and financial crime in the three Crown Dependencies. The report ruled that the Jersey Financial Services Commission should not regulate and promote the finance industry, thus the industry has more or less been left without a voice when it comes to either promoting or defending itself. A means of defending itself in the face of international criticism and pressure would have been particularly welcome these past two months following the publication of the OECD blacklist of tax havens.

So enter Promoco, which is still some way from becoming operational. The working party for its creation is headed by Geoffrey Grime, the former chairman of the Abacus Group, who said ‘The aim is for the body to promote Jersey’s main industry and counter negative criticisms. Promoco will not be leading the debate but making sure that people really know what the facts are. That will be both externally and internally, as the industry does not necessarily have a good image in Jersey.’

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