Tiny British Virgin Islands has big role in leaked documents [View all]

[Judi Lynn]

Source: Associated Press

Tiny British Virgin Islands has big role in leaked documents

Ben Fox and Kenneth Silva, Associated Press

Updated 12:48 pm, Saturday, April 9, 2016



TORTOLA, British Virgin Islands (AP) — A thriving financial services industry that evolved over the last 30 years in the British Virgin Islands made it one of the most popular places in the world to form a corporation, turning a sleepy cluster of Caribbean islands into a global hub of finance.

Now the British Virgin Islands has come under scrutiny like never before thanks to the leak of confidential documents from a Panama-based law firm that specializes in offshore finance.

More than half the 200,000 offshore companies set up by the Mossack Fonseca law firm, including ones owned by the father of British Prime Minister David Cameron and relatives of Chinese leader Xi Jinping, were registered in the BVI, according to reports coordinated by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists.

BVI officials have sought in recent days to address the reports while defending financial oversight in a territory where incorporated entities outnumber residents by a ratio of more than 10-to-1 and blue-suited lawyers and bankers on the streets of Tortola often outnumber tourists.


Read more: http://www.chron.com/news/world/article/Tiny-British-Virgin-Islands-has-big-role-in-7238258.php

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