ICIJ REMINDS IS THAT NEVIS' DARK OFFSHORE INDUSTRY HAS OPAQUE BRITISH PLAYERS, WHICH THE UK WILL NOT RESTRAIN

This week's corruption offering from the INTERNATIONAL CONSORTIUM OF INVESTIGATIVE JOURNALISTS (ICIJ), and which was picked up by the prominent British publication, The Guardian, details the sordid use of expat UK nationals as nominee officers and directors in the offshore industry in Nevis.Those individuals, who serve on the books of hundreds, or even thousands, international business companies, make a good living by signing everything that they are instructed to endorse, while knowing absolutely nothing about the companies they are supposedly running.

Their total lack of knowledge regarding corporate affairs makes them perfect frontmen and women, because if subpoenaed, they cannot disclose anything, and they are the only people of record. The ICIJ specifically targeted Nevis, the quieter, but more financially implicated, part of the Federation of Saint Christopher & Nevis. More commonly known as St Kitts, which already is under a global compliance microscope, due to the filing of a billion dollar RICO suit for CBI fraud, money laundering & corruption, these new disclosures will most likely give Nevis an additional black mark, and cause increased Country Risk, especially in the American compliance sector.

The British Government, although claiming to rein in the abuse, by UK citizens, of the offshore nominee director loophole, has done little to hold its nationals' feet to the fire when, they participate in this financial obscenity, which deprives much of Europe of needed tax revenue, and hides the identities of the owners, as well as richly rewards UK financial advisors who perpetrate this practice.

As the names of some of the more egregious offshore nominees appear in the articles, compliance officers might want to check their bank records to see whether any appear as directors of companies that their bank services. You don't want to discover too late that you have been hoodwinked, and that what you thought was a clean client is, in truth and in fact, something else, which you never would have given approval to.