Small can be smart—and smooth: the Cayman Islands' relations abroad and effects at home
✍ Scribed by John E. Kersell
- Publisher
- John Wiley and Sons
- Year
- 1998
- Tongue
- English
- Weight
- 102 KB
- Volume
- 18
- Category
- Article
- ISSN
- 0271-2075
No coin nor oath required. For personal study only.
✦ Synopsis
The Cayman Islands were among the ®rst micro-states to establish a thriving oshore ®nancial services industry by exploiting their historical status as a tax-free jurisdiction. This was threatened when concern about the laundering of the proceeds of drug-tracking induced the United States to challenge bank secrecy laws in the Caymans and other ®nancial centres. This article demonstrates how decision-makers in the islands shrewdly secured the assistance of their protecting power, Britain, to gain leverage in negotiations with the United States, how they developed a negotiating brief and thereby created model arrangements that permit the exchange of certain ®nancial information, while protecting the ®nancial security of the legitimate patrons of their banks.