Secrecy Jurisdictions

The Mapping  the  Faultlines  project  is  based  on  the  contention  that  the mechanisms  that allow illicit financial flows to occur result from a synergistic relationship between the world’s secrecy  jurisdictions  and  its  secrecy  providers  (usually  accountants,  lawyers  and  bankers) who  create  the  structures  that  these  jurisdictions  facilitate.  Inherent  in  the  work  is  an assumption that an alternative is possible: that if there was increased financial transparency it would be much harder  to hide  illicit  financial  flows, and  that  in  turn  the volume of  such flows would decrease.
 
The Mapping the Faultlines project is not seeking to offer policy solutions to the problems it identifies  at  this  time:  these  will  be  offered  at  a  later  date.  It  does,  however,  seem inappropriate  that  it  address  issues  of  secrecy  and  the  problems  it  creates  unless  the alternative of transparency, and the merits it can deliver, is considered.

This paper seeks to do just that, both by exploring the arguments for transparency and what the  resulting benefits might be of achieving  it, and by describing what  transparency would look  like if it were to exist. In doing so this paper seeks to do more than describe what is, it seeks to describe what should be. Yet this is not an exercise in determining what ought to be so, based on examples from current best practice: this paper suggests that there  is an ideal form of financial transparency to which we should aspire, and sets out what that might be. Without seeking to establish this ideal it is suggested that any eventual policy proposal this work might give rise to will fall short of the goal to which society should aspire.