The Technology Campus – TV1 02P, AI-2640, Anguilla, B.W.I. – http://www.anguilla-counts.ai
Ph. (264) 497-3800, Cell (604) 596-2355, Fax (702) 447-8567
Monday, September 2, 2013
The Editor
The Anguillian
Box 98, The Valley
Anguilla
Dear Sir
Last week HE the Governor made a short statement which is going to be long remembered as a major step forward in our island’s progress to be a model and leader for international business.
“Enhanced transparency is good for investment & growth.”
Her statement was made on Twitter… one of the new driving forces in social and commercial networking media…. and an indication that Anguillians are aware of and use new technologies in our daily lives.
Her topic, “transparency” is fundamental to the establishment of global “reputational capital” which major governments have decided to be essential for individuals, companies and countries to interact with one another in very complex global activities and markets. Those markets for Anguilla total 7 billion people worldwide!
As so aptly expressed by HE Governor Scott, “transparency” is a very positive force not simply to maintain some international minimum standard of probity but also as a way to promote constructive global investment and growth which will create opportunities for Anguilla to be a model for other nations because of our substantial “reputational capital”.
Heretofore, “transparency” translated into the “loss of secrecy”. While appropriate in some areas of acceptable “confidentiality”; “secrecy” is all too often associated with abuse, terrorism financing, money laundering, concealment of commercial or political bribes, and fraudulent tax evasion. These perils must be avoided!
On the other hand, the rewards for transparent conduct are very high. For example, countries like Canada, Holland, Spain encourage their citizens to invest abroad by providing exemptions to those investors of as much as 28% from an Anguilla venture when they bring the resultant profits home … provided the investor does so transparently.
Imagine an Anguilla hotel complex, or a new restaurant or other Anguilla business financed by such investors who would experience a 28% advantage over similar investments in their own home country!
Additionally, there are many unique and completely “transparent” arbitrage advantages which Anguilla offers compared to other competing international centres. These include unique legislation; our ideal development/experimental incubator size; powerful international treaties; and our long-standing strategic choice of zero local income taxation …so advantageous and attractive internationally. That legitimate zero tax is also a firmly entrenched Anguillian domestic right which preserves our most valuable arbitrage advantage!
In contrast, and due at least in part to a “lack of transparency”, consider the collapse of banks in Iceland and most recently of Cyprus and the loss of billions of dollars by depositors in those banks. Consider as well the Bernie Madoff, Allen Stanford debacles; LIBOR rate-fixing scandals; J.P. Morgan Chase’s $7 billion trading loss; Standard Chartered Bank’s Iranian transactions; Knight Capital’s $7 billion trading error; and of HSBC laundering money for cartel and terrorist groups. Anguilla has avoided association with all of those reputational disasters.
Anguilla’s leadership in the development of many tools and software systems to provide “transparency and reputational capital” will be featured at presentations and workshops at the 31st Cambridge Economic Crime Symposium this Friday, September 6, 2013 and again at the Digital Policy Alliance event at the London Science Museum Thursday, October 10, 2013. Flexeye Technologies, an Anguillian/British company, builds and operates these systems to promote and sustain “reputational capital” for many government and corporate clients worldwide.
The transparency recommendations and actions by Prime Minister Cameron, the G8, the G20, and the OECD are creating opportunities for Anguilla to capitalize on our past efforts and to lead the transition from “secrecy” to “transparency and reputational capital”.
It behooves us to work together to become a global centre for legitimate, safe, efficient, transparent investment and a channel for broadly-based international capital.
I am not aware of any other jurisdiction or government emphasizing the “opportunities” of “transparency” or aspiring to become truly a model of legitimate Intellectual Arbitrage and probity. Most others continue to bemoan, or are trying to delay, the loss of “secrecy”.
We owe a heartfelt vote of thanks to Governor Scott for such a dramatic and positive directional contribution so early in her time with us in Anguilla.
Sincerely
Lynwood S. Bell
Director, Anguilla-Counts, Inc. (a not-for-profit Anguilla organization)
(Published without editing by The Anguillian newspaper.)
