“Jersey has taken a lead on global transparency” – Osborne

Friday 13 May 2016

UK Chancellor George Osborne has praised Jersey’s leading role in developing global transparency in financial services on the day of a major London summit for world leaders on tackling corruption.

Osborne says the Island has played an influential role in improving international standards, and says that Jersey can play a part in the development of new standards for exchanging information on beneficial ownership of companies between countries around the world.

In a letter to Chief Minister Ian Gorst, released yesterday while the Senator was attending the London anti-corruption summit along with politicians from around the world, Osborne welcomed Jersey’s commitment to joining a new global standard for exchanging beneficial ownership information.

He wrote: “Jersey has taken a lead on global transparency as a cooperative jurisdiction, including through your early commitment to the Common Reporting Standard, your joining of the Multilateral Convention and the important role that you have played and continue to play in the Global Forum for Tax Transparency where you are rated Largely Compliant.

“This has been influential in helping achieve rapid global uptake of these standards and a step-change in global tax transparency.”

In an earlier letter, Senator Gorst had confirmed that Jersey would join the jurisdictions developing and committing to the new global standard for exchange of beneficial ownership information – saying that he was doing so on the basis that the standard was set on a clear mandate from the G20 group of countries, that all finance centres would be assessed against it, and that it “balances transparency against… privacy rights”.

He also cited the fact that Jersey’s register of beneficial ownership had been in place since 1989, and that the Island had regulated trust and corporate service providers since 2000 – and that Moneyval’s forthcoming report in 2015 states: "Jersey's combination of a central register of the UBO with a high level of vetting/evaluation not found elsewhere and regulation of TCSPs of a standard found in few other jurisdictions has been widely recognised by international organisations and individual jurisdictions as placing Jersey in a leading position in meeting standards of beneficial ownership transparency."