Senator P F Horsfall, President of the Jersey Government's Policy and Resources Committee, has written to several UK newspapers to protest sloppy journalism which last week reported President Bush's Executive Order, Sir Howard Davies' speech, and reactions from EU officials in a way that seemed to focus criticism on offshore financial centres for their involvement in money laundering and the financing of terrorist acts.
Although the Senator doesn't say so explicitly, he hints at the fact that the UK and the US are in fact much more likely to be unwittingly harbouring terrorist financing and money-laundering than is Jersey, due to the opacity of their financial sectors and their lack of effective legislation.
Mr Horsfall's letter to The Independent newspaper runs as follows:
Sir: Your Financial Editor's report about financial services regulation in offshore centres to counter money laundering ("FSA's Davies warns offshore tax havens: clean up your act", 27 September) cannot be allowed to pass without comment. Nor can recent comments ascribed to unnamed European Union officials about the EU now needing to "focus on tax havens", under which description the Channel Islands were included.
Jersey is an international finance centre of repute, with a high standard of regulation that has been publicly recognised by UK ministers as well as international bodies such as the G7 Financial Stability Forum. Our laws against terrorism and laundering the proceeds of crime are at the cutting edge.
Jersey is absolutely at one with America and all others in the fight against terrorism, money laundering and fiscal crime. Since the terrible events of 11 September our Financial Services Commission has been in very close touch with fellow regulators in the USA. We are completely committed to lending every possible support to the rooting out of terrorism and its financing and we are as well, if not better, able than many others including EU member states, to undertake this speedily using existing legal powers because we run a smaller ship where co-ordination between the different responsible authorities is easier than in large jurisdictions.
It is all too easy for people to attack so-called "tax-havens" across the board and to use the Channel Islands as a convenient example. But there is no evidence that quality offshore financial centres such as Jersey are any less rigorous or determined than the EU member states themselves in the attack on terrorism and its funding.
Senator P F HORSFALL
President, Policy and Resources Committee
States of Jersey
.
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