Cayman moves toward more beneficial owner access
(CNS) The Cayman Islands Government is moving towards expanding who can access beneficial ownership information about financial entities registered here, beyond law enforcement agencies. Cabinet is expected to consider the Beneficial Ownership (Legitimate Interest Access) Regulations, 2024 shortly, which poses the question of what legitimate interest is and who has it.
The government continues to battle against full public access, but the coming regime change will offer some members of the public access to some ownership information. However, the key issue will be how legitimate interest is defined. While the press and certain non-profits from across the world are likely to be some of the first to claim that legitimate interest, it remains very unclear who decides whether they do or not, given that such access could be said to clash with privacy rights and data protection legislation.
A press release issued by the financial services ministry on Thursday, following Premier Juliana O’Connor-Connolly’s meetings at this year’s Joint Ministerial Council in London, said that as the minister for Financial Services, she had reaffirmed Cayman’s position of “reasonable cooperation with the UK” on beneficial ownership transparency. She said the CIG was also introducing “robust access” to information “based on legitimate interest protocols that align with evolving global standards and our constitutional obligations”.
But this new regime is far from clear.
The concept of legitimate interest recognises that access to beneficial ownership information extends beyond law enforcement based on the 2022 EU Court judgment (Sovim v Luxembourg). This judgment balanced transparency with privacy rights by requiring access to beneficial ownership information only where there is a “legitimate interest” and is an important guide to what legitimate interest actually is though it is not yet properly defined.
“While there is currently no recognised global standard for legitimate interest access (LIA), it is prudent that we carefully balance transparency with privacy rights while taking the necessary steps to introduce LIA in relevant money laundering and sanctions legislation,” the premier said in the ministry’s release.
Officials added that, in keeping pace with these and other global developments, the Cayman Islands has invested time, effort and expense over the past few years in developing and implementing the Beneficial Ownership Transparency Act. This now aligns with current global standards and consolidates all of the Cayman Islands’ previous beneficial ownership legislation. It also fosters compliance through “multilayered robust verification requirements”.
The ministry claims that this law augments Cayman’s reputation for international cooperation by providing rapid, unfettered access to our law enforcement agencies and competent authorities. Access is also provided to government agencies, including those involved in public procurement, licensed financial institutions, and regulated designated non-financial businesses and professions.
It also assists us with preparations for the Cayman Islands’ 5th round of mutual evaluation under the Financial Action Task Force (FATF), which sets the global standard for beneficial ownership transparency.
As part of the framework, the Beneficial Ownership (Access Restriction) Regulations, 2024, are expected to be published and enacted on 9 December. These will form the legal framework for protecting people for whom disclosing their beneficial ownership information to the public would establish a threat of serious harm.
The rules relating to legitimate interest access will come later and will permit certain members of the public to access information once they have demonstrated a legitimate interest for doing so.
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Category: Local News
If this unfolds, P Diddy’s secret stash of millions, cleverly hidden from Uncle Sam, could spell disaster for him—locking him in a tight grip from which he might never escape! And let’s not forget, he won’t be alone; it could shake the very foundations of 3/4 of the US Senate and Congress as well!
Dis all seems complicated and speak we say Dwayne the Rock Seymour be now needed to tell everyone all us wich way take the wheel Rock daddy pants big belt needed like a shepherd guiding sheep thanks Rock tanks a lot!
You mean Dwayne the Excavator Seymour not the Rock @ 10:52 don’t you?
No, he’s definitely the rock, which is why the excavator… was Super Effective!
Known as the Rock cause rock solid unwavering unbreakable man of bedrock fortitude stabilizer all elements needed to set things right right on Rock you rock!!! Pardon the pun
If there are 130,000 entities Registered, and a UBO online search costs $20 per enquiry, then ICIJ would just pay the $2.6mln to download the entire Cayman Islands dataset and mirror it online for free somewhere hostile. Not sure how that helps those living outside the Goldilocks G7 that are genuinely trying to avoid serious daily KNR risks, even while paying taxes, and living lawfully.
At the end of the day, it almost doesn’t matter what trailblazing initiatives Cayman, the Finance Center, signs on to yield (again), so long as the global perception prevails that our government is one that cannot be trusted. With $2 billion hidden from the CIG Balance Sheet, procurement shortcutting, developer side-deals, tender failures, questionable judicial decisions, dithering CIMA, and cooked CIG/SAGC books, some ministries still overdue from 2021 – it is a credible instinct. JOCC is one of the central characters that actively besmirches the external reputation of these islands just by remaining eligible for political life. The Nolan Principles need to be given meaning and teeth, and voters need to purge the Parliament in April.
‘financial services’…..zzzzzzzzzz
everyone knows the game we play down here.
“we”. Evidently you have no clue.
This is a slippery slope and one we should do our best to avoid. If “legitimate access” is allowed for any reporter pretending they are acting in the public interest we might as well just open the whole thing up. It will be paradise papers all over again. A smear job without regard to privacy rights. People’s reputations and actions are questioned just for being “offshore”.
It’s so sick that we spent all that time fighting the EU’s attempts to shut us down, complied with everything, they’re finally leaving us alone (for the moment) and we’re going to get screwed by our own mother country.
This is not what it seems to be in your opinion, being a tax haven we are obviously under a microscope not just the mother country’s microscope either, the US and EU’s also. Safe guards are there to prevent any impostors leaking this information and the process is akin to KYC to prove legitimate interest. Those with cloaked dirty fingers in the pot will now face the big reveal. Unscrupulous money managers will also face the music. Are you scared of that?
Cayman is both cooperative and tax neutral – not a haven from any domestic taxation code, where that might apply. Anyone deludedly playing that game, is living on borrowed time, both on client and service provider sides:
https://www.ditc.ky/ditc-documents/list-of-international-exchange-of-information-agreements/
what you hiding or afraid of?
Nothing. I just respect people’s right to privacy. We are an international financial jurisdiction and we compete for business with other similar places around the world. Less privacy so that people can be nosy and infer some sort of misconduct or impropriety just because someone has a company here or is an investor in a fund here is bad for business.
This information is already available to tax authorities and law enforcement – that is people with a legitimate interest. Struggling media companies trying to stay afloat selling gossip isn’t legitimate.
Corruption is bad for business too?
I think you’re missing the point. The mere fact that someone does business here doesn’t make them corrupt. If there is corruption this should be investigated by the authorities and regulators and prosecuted. No one is disputing that.
It is markedly easier to identify corruption when stakeholders can’t be easily hidden behind LLCs etc. for purposes of “privacy(🙄)”
You can currently pay $25 to find out who owns the entity.
Local corruption is not prosecuted though, is it?
In most of the world, those with capital live very privately and discreetly, in constant fear of the genuine risk to self, spouse, kids of getting violently abducted and murdered, or held for ransom. So that, for starters.
Why don’t you give the public your banking details so we can see what’s in there and assess whether you’re a crook or not?
Details of claims filed in CI Grand Court (some of which is deeply personal and private) are republished via OffshoreAlert and their proxy sites, surnames hyperlinked, often with editorialized inflections of presumed guilt and warehoused forever online as if foregone fact. eg. Will Cayman ever be afforded an ordinary level of family privacy and decency when it comes to breakdown of relationships and children? Legitimate Interest Access needs to cut both ways, at minimum, to protect minor children and innocents (sometimes those are also defendants). Nowhere else in the world are such private family claims republished for all to peruse and search, anywhere in the world.
If Legitimate Interest Access means securities regulators, tax authorities, courts, and international police agencies, then they already have open access lanes they might use to verify information. Nothing changes.
That’s all entirely legitimate. The press or private individuals on fishing expeditions is different.