August 24, 2016 - Swiss court clears former Cayman banker of breaking bank secrecy laws
a Swiss court in Zurich rejected prosecution demands to convict the 60-year-old for violating Swiss banking secrecy laws. The upper court also refused to ban Mr. Elmer from taking up employment in the banking industry. He currently works as an asset manager.
August 19, 2016 - Cayman Islands-registered firms top 100,000 mark for first time
Cayman-registered companies were poised to break the 100,000 mark for the past two years. In 2014, the number of registered companies fell just short at 99,459. Last year, this figure declined slightly despite a 7.8 percent increase in new registrations, as company terminations were 64 percent higher in 2015 than in the previous year.
August 10, 2016 - Belize offshore bank sees a run on deposits after Fatca probe
The value of deposits in Belize Bank International (BBI) has dropped by almost 75% over the last six months to $31m from $102m (€91m, £76m), according to data from Belize’s central bank.
August 10, 2016 - FATCA enforced in Curacao, what is it?
WILLEMSTAD, Curacao -- FACTA is now being enforced in Curacao as of August 3, 2016
August 2, 2016 - Canadian banks agree to release information on Cayman Islands accounts
The Federal Court of Canada has approved federal requests for seven years' worth of transaction information from the Royal Bank of Canada and Citibank, NA, related to correspondent accounts in the name of Cayman National Bank Ltd in the Cayman Islands.
June 1, 2016 - Cayman the third-biggest foreign owner of US government debt
This is up 31 percent from a year earlier, according to data from the US Treasury Department. Cayman ranks behind usual suspects China and Japan. Those nations, the world’s second- and third-biggest economies, each own more than $1 trillion of Treasuries.
April 4, 2016 - Panama Papers: Rich and powerful respond to claims they hid billions offshore
Elected leaders and top officials from around the world are responding with denials and outrage to allegations that they used secret offshore companies and accounts to hide billions of dollars.
April 4, 2016 - Massive leak reveals offshore accounts of world leaders
The documents include nearly 40 years of data from inside Mossack Fonseca, a little known but powerful law firm based in Panama with branches in Hong Kong, Miami, Zurich and 35 other cities worldwide.
April 4, 2016 - A storm is coming
The names of many Icelandic public officials show up in the internal documents of Mossack Fonseca (Mossfon), the Panamanian offshore provider. Among them are Prime Minister Sigmundur David Gunnlaugsson, Finance Minister Bjarni Benediktsson, and the Minister of the Interior, Ólöf Nordal.
April 4, 2016 - About the Panama Papers
an anonymous source contacted the Süddeutsche Zeitung (SZ) and submitted encrypted internal documents from Mossack Fonseca, a Panamanian law firm that sells anonymous offshore companies around the world. These shell companies enable their owners to cover up their business dealings, no matter how shady.
March 10, 2016 - Two Cayman Island Financial Institutions Plead Guilty in Manhattan Federal Court to Conspiring to Hide More Than $130 Million in Cayman Bank Accounts
CNS and CNT pleaded guilty to a criminal Information charging them with conspiring with many of their U.S. taxpayer-clients to hide more than $130 million in offshore accounts from the U.S. Internal Revenue Service (IRS) and to evade U.S. taxes on the income earned in those accounts. CNS and CNT entered their guilty pleas pursuant to plea agreements requiring the companies to, among other things, produce through the treaty process account files of non-compliant U.S. taxpayers who maintained accounts at CNS and CNT, and pay a total of $6 million in financial penalties. The plea proceeding took place today before the Honorable U.S. District Judge Thomas P. Griesa for the Southern District of New York.
February 19, 2016 - Getting Up To Date On FATCA - A Recap And Update
The Cayman Islands entered into a Model 1 inter-governmental agreement (US IGA) with the US. Under Model 1 IGAs, financial institutions gather the relevant information and report this to their home country (usually its tax authority). The home country then forwards on the information to the IRS.
February 8, 2016 - Cayman’s offshore banking sector shrinking
Cayman banks have come under pressure by their US partners, who, under international regulations like the US Financial Action Task Force guidelines, take a risk-based approach on a client-by-client basis.
January 14, 2016 - Clinton targets Cayman Islands tax schemes
“We are now in a position, I think, where we can go after some of these schemes that you did read about: the kind of misclassifying of income, trying to make it look like it’s capital gains when it is really ordinary income, going ahead and routing income through the Bahamas or the Cayman Islands or wherever,” she said.
January 7, 2016 - Panton: Tax dodgers beware
Financial Services Minister Hon Wayne Panton says Cayman National’s US $6million settlement following a US tax evasion probe should serve as a lesson that tax evasion will not be allowed to flourish here.