It does not take long for a visitor to the Caymans to Cayman several times only because LTCM, $20 million worth of Sudanese transfers. headquartered in Connecticut, consisted of Its employee training manual even con- realise that the 1993 film The Firm still arouses the partnerships in Delaware and the Cayman tained a section on how to conduct these ire of those in the Cayman financial sector. Even Islands. Cayman though was mentioned illegal transactions. only in the context of bankruptcy and other In addition to the Lloyds-Credit Suisse today in certain circles Cayman is synonymous legal strategies and not in connection what- and Iran matter, a 17 July 2008 Senate In- soever of wrongdoing on the part of any vestigations Subcommittee report entitled with money laundering and other financial Cayman entity or person, a theme which Tax Haven Banks and US Tax Compliance repeats as this issue is researched. focused on UBS and LGT. In this well-known misdeeds. Others however recognise that Cayman And the NGO Global Witness’ 2009 report case, UBS agreed to pay a US government is far from the world’s money laundering haven Undue Diligence: How Banks Do Business fine after one of its private bankers, Bradley With Corrupt Regimes discusses numerous Birkenfeld, resigned in 2005 and informed and is in fact exploited by fraudsters because of its Caribbean and European countries but has the US government that UBS had assisted nothing to say about Cayman. thousands of US citizens in evading US record of political and financial stability. In fact, despite its image problem, no taxes. The Subcommittee Report cited UBS’ Cayman entity or person has been respon- estimate that it held in Switzerland 1,000 sible for any of the major and newsworthy accounts of US citizens which have been financial crimes in years. While these major declared to the IRS and 19,000 accounts cases have been widely reported and the in- which have not, these totalling $17.9 bil- stitutions heavenly fined, contrasting them lion. with cases where the has The second part of this report dealt been implicated is telling. with the information revealed by former In 1999, the Bank of New York was LGT employee Heinrich Kieber, now in hid- found to have laundered $7.5 billion in Rus- ing, who copied LGT files showing how sian money. In 2000 a BoNY vice president it assisted 1,400 clients from numerous plead guilty to the laundering and in 2005 countries to evade taxes and provided Money BoNY settled the matter with the Justice De- them to several governments, first to Ger- partment. Other fines in 2005 – Riggs Banks many. Within a month the , laundering and for conducting transactions for former Germany, the United Kingdom, Italy, Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet and for France, Spain, and Australia Canada, New Equatorial Guinea’s ruling family, the New Zealand, Sweden were investigating the financial crime: York branch of Jordan’s Arab Bank for fail- material provided by Kieber. ure to maintain proper AML practices and In March 2010, Wachovia Bank agreed The Cayman Islands ABN AMRO for improperly supervising its to pay a fine for AML violations regarding North American Regional Clearing Center improper due diligence of transactions in- in a global perspective for processing approximately 20,000 trans- volving Mexico. For example, from 2004 to actions valued at $3.2 billion using shell 2007 Wachovia processed over 2 million companies in the United States, Russia and wire transfers amounting to approximately b y Richard Horowitz other former Soviet Union countries $374 billion on behalf of 13 Mexican cor- In 2007, the Russian customs service respondent customers without proper AML sued Bank of New York for lost revenue on controls. And in May 2010, Italian police ayman is certainly a financial suc- Wars-How Billions of Illegal Dollars Are Washed the aforementioned laundered money and announced they are investigating 7,000 cess. A February 2010 International Through Banks & Businesses (1992), Washed in the parties reached an agreement in 2009, account holders from HSBC Holding’s Monetary Fund paper entitled Cross- Gold: The Story Behind the Biggest Money Laun- where among other things, BoNY paid Rus- Swiss private bank after a former Geneva- Border Investment in Small Inter- dering Investigation in US History (1994), nor in sian customs $14 million. based HSBC employee turned over a list of nationalC Centers reported that Bank for Inter- the recently published Infiltrator: My Secret Life After a two-year investigation in 2009, 127,000 accounts belonging to 80,000 peo- national Settlements statistics “indicate that Inside the Dirty Banks Behind Pablo Escobar’s US and New York authorities fined Credit ple to French officials. (See Sidebar 2) banks resident in the Cayman Islands held over Medellin Cartel (2009). Other significant books Suisse and Lloyds for conducting illegal Individuals as well as institutions have 0 1 0 2 r e t r a u q d r i h t $1.7 trillion in assets at the end of 2008 (more make little reference to Cayman. (See Sidebar 1) transactions for Iran. Both banks deleted been in the news. In 2008, Hernan Arbizu, a than Italy, Portugal and Spain combined).” And Nor, for example, is the Cayman Islands information from wire transfer documents native Argentinean and vice president of JP the March 2010 Global Financial Centres Index mentioned in the International Monetary Fund’s to hide their Iranian origin and advised Morgan Chase’s Latin American unit based

issue no. 20 ranked Cayman as 28th in the world, tied with 2009 report entitled Ponzi Schemes in the Car- Iranian banks on how to avoid detection. in New York was indicted for fraud. While

| Edinburgh and Seoul and right ahead of Dublin, ibbean, which discusses seven other Caribbean Credit Suisse was found to have conduct- at JP Morgan, Arbizu, a former UBS private Hamilton and Munich. islands. Even the one hundred forty page report ed 7,000 illegal transactions amounting to banker, pretended to his UBS clients that he

Despite its negative image in certain circles, entitled Hedge Funds, Leverage, and the Lessons $700 million and fined for assisting the Ira- continued working at UBS and with the help | it is telling to review material where Cayman is of Long-Term Capital Management compiled in nian banks and other institutions like Iran’s of a willing accomplice at UBS sent docu- . 20 2 o. n e u s s i found to be unremarkable or is not found at all. 1999 by the President’s Working Group on Finan- Atomic Energy Organisation and its Aero- ments with forged client signatures to UBS A simple check of indexes of relevant books cial Markets (consisting of the Treasury Depart- space Industries Organisation to facilitate. in order to transfer money to certain clients’ shows that the Cayman Islands is not listed in ment, the Federal Reserve, the SEC and the Com- Lloyds was found to have made $300 from the accounts of other clients. He was

third quarter 2010 The Money Launderers: Lessons From The Drug modity Futures Trading Commission) mentions million of Iranian transfers and another caught trying to send a UBS client money

7 0 www.caymanfinancialreview.com www.caymanfinancialreview.com 7 1 sidebar 1 from a client’s account at JP Morgan. References to the Caymans in Salah Ezzedine a Lebanese businessman, was arrested Relevant Books in Lebanon in 2009 and charged of conducting a one bil- The Secret Money Market: Inside the lion dollar pyramid scheme. There is no need to detail the Dark World of Tax Evasion, Financial Fraud, Insider Trading, Money Madoff and Stanford Ponzi schemes. Laundering, and Capital Flight (1990): 6 But after all, the Cayman Islands does have its history The Laundrymen: Inside Money with money laundering and other financial improprie- Laundering, the World’s Third Largest ties. Arrested in 1975, , the drug dealer who Business (1996): 5 monopolised the drug market in the 1960s and Transnational Criminal Organizations, 1970s and played by in the 2007 film Cybercrime, and Money Laundering: American Gangster, had an estimated $52 million in Cay- A Handbook for Law Enforcement man banks (though at the time money laundering was not Officers, Auditors, and Financial Investigators (1999): 6 a crime in the United States nor in Cayman). Called Op- Crime School: Money Laundering: True eration Coast, from 1981-1993 the South Africa apartheid Crime Meets the World of Business and regime tried to develop biological and chemical weapons Finance (2004): 3 in contravention of the Biological and Toxins Weapons Dirty Dealings: The Untold Truth Convention with their principal companies for this effort About Global Money Laundering, incorporated in the Caymans. International Crime, and Terrorism In recent years, the Senate Finance Committee held a (2006): 3 hearing on 24 July 2008 entitled The Cayman Islands and Offshore Tax Issues. The Wall Street Journal of 30 Septem- America’s leading authorities on financial crime “indicated that the Cayman Islands is the busiest environment, accessible by Americans with a sidebar 2 ber 2008 published an article written by former Manhattan and offshore centres, attorney Jack Blum said, “I United Kingdom overseas territory with regard to thirty minute flight from Florida. The Caymans Significant penalties and fines District Attorney Robert Morgenthau entitled “Too Much listened to the comments about Ugland House requests for information, but also the most co- has a strong record of bilateral and international UBS – $780 million Money Is Beyond Legal Reach”. Morgenthau cited Long Term and must say to you that Ugland House repre- operative” and that Cayman is one of DOJ’s ‘best cooperation. And much of the abuse associated Credit Suisse – $536 million Capital Management, two collapsed Bear Stearns hedge sents the best of offshore.” (See sidebar 4) partners among offshore jurisdictions”. The re- with Cayman is due to loopholes in US law that Lloyds – $350 million funds and BCCI as all being charted in the Caymans. Second, a report entitled Large US Corpora- port also noted Cayman’s “reputation as a stable, Congress has heretofore been unable to close. Wachovia – $110 million Senator Carl Levin who chairs the Senate Investigations tions and Federal Contractors with Subsidiaries in business-friendly environment with a sound legal It appears therefore that the reasons for the ABN AMRO – $80 million Subcommittee entered this article into the Congressional Jurisdictions Listed as Tax Havens or Financial Pri- infrastructure [which] also attracts business. This negative view of the Cayman Islands may be best Riggs Bank – $41 million Record two days later. vacy Jurisdictions, published by the GAO Decem- activity is typically legal.” explained by public relations rather than finan- The Bank of New York – $38 million Estimates are that Enron established between 400 and ber 2008 found that according to 2007 revenue Even a FinCEN Advisory dated July 2000 re- cial and criminal analysts. The Arab Bank – $24 million 700 subsidiaries in the Caymans. Parmalat’s books showed figures, eighty three of the 100 largest publicly ported Cayman’s “records of cooperation with a balance of $3.9 billion in the account of its Cayman sub- traded companies and sixty three of the 100 larg- criminal law enforcement authorities in the Unit- Bio: At a glance sidiary which in fact was empty. And much has been made est publicly traded US federal contractors report- ed States is excellent”. sidebar 3 of the Ugland House beginning in March 2004 with an ed having subsidiaries in tax havens. In short, the Perhaps it is not a coincidence that the SEC Richard Horowitz is an attorney Californian Congressman Brad Sherman (March 17, 2009): article published in Bloomberg Market entitled “The 150 report emphasised that the establishment of these chose CIMA as its partner for their April 2010 re- concentrating on corporate, security “Now we’re focused on the bonuses being paid to the croupiers of this AIG Billion Shell Game.” North Dakota Senator Byron Dorgan offshore subsidiaries is itself legal. gional training program. And a May 2010 review and international matters. He holds casino . . . Now all that money is in the hands of the executives. No doubt stated from the floor of the Senate on 12 April 2010 that In fact, the point of Senator Dorgan’s April of the Caymans by QFinance reported the fol- they have got them in Cayman Island accounts as we speak.” a private investigator’s license and Ugland House “in 2004 was the official home to 12,748 cor- 2010 statement was to highlight that US law al- lowing: “The ‘dark days’ of the Cayman Islands’ served in the Israel Defence Forces for porations . . .since that time, since 12,748 corporations lows offshore subsidiaries to be established and financial services and banking centre, when the Minnesotan Congresswoman Amy Klobuchar (February 26, six years attaining the rank of captain. 2008): used that little 5-story house to avoid paying taxes, it has that the problem is their abuse (“It was a legal Islands were a haven for money laundering, are He has lectured in 17 countries on now grown to over 18,000 corporate addresses.” dodge by companies setting up an address in now well and truly over.” “I want to see an administration that aims for fiscal responsibility by money laundering, terrorism and eliminating offshore tax havens for multimillionaires so people aren’t hiding Statements made from the floor of the House of Rep- order to funnel revenue through that address to What we can conclude therefore is as follows. related topics, including at last money in the Cayman Islands.” resentatives also reflect this negative attitude about Cay- avoid paying taxes to the United States . . . How Despite the numerous and significant interna- year’s Global Compliance Solutions man. (See Sidebar 3) about helping me close those loopholes?”) Sena- tional cases, the have been no major Cayman en- conference in the Cayman Islands. sidebar 4 What then can be understood from the pejorative tor Levin similarly entered DA Morgenthau’s Wall tities or individuals known as international fraud- Jack Blum on the Cayman Islands, Senate Investigations statements regarding the Cayman Islands, particularly in Street Journal article for the same reason, stat- sters. Even in his 15-page whistle blower letter of Committee, July 24, 2008: light of the numerous international frauds perpetrated by ing “we have a lot more work to do to rectify” the February 2008, Rudolf Elmer, the former COO of reputable institutions and ostensibly reputable individu- problem of abusive offshore entities. And Mor- the Cayman Branch of Bank Julius Baer & Trust “I listened to the comments about Ugland House and must say to you that 0 1 0 2 r e t r a u q d r i h t Ugland House represents the best of offshore, because Cayman Islands als without any Cayman connection? genthau himself wrote “We have to learn from our Ltd, criticised the Swiss private bank for aiding actually keeps better records than most of the other jurisdictions and has There are several indications which put the issue of mistakes” and warned of the consequences “if clients to evade tax but alleged no wrongdoing on fewer corporations. If you really want to worry about things look at the financial crime in the Caymans into perspective. Congress and Treasury fail to bring under US su- the part of any Cayman entity or person. His criti- British Virgin Islands with 500,000 corporations, no records on any wall, issueissue no.no. 2020 First, those who routinely insinuate that the Ugland pervisory authority the financial institutions and cism of Cayman was directed against Cayman law Richard Horowitz

you can’t go to a place and find an office because there is none, and no | | regular records to find out who currently owns the corporation. You can House facilitates tax evasion do not present examples cor- transactions in secrecy jurisdictions.” which allowed for certain financial transactions, Richard Horowitz & Associates

go to the Island of Nevis and you won’t even be able to find an address roborating their assertion. Similarly, the aforementioned Third, A July 2008 GAO report entitled Cay- which he thought should have been prohibited; Attorneys at Law

for the corporation. There are no Nevis nominee shareholders, directors, 2008 Senate Finance Committee hearing on Cayman last- man Islands – Business and Tax Advantages At- his letter made no claim that a Cayman entity or 450 Seventh Avenue, 9th Floor | officers, if you were to take those people send them to Guantanamo and ing about an hour and forty minutes made scant reference tract US Persons and Enforcement Challenges person violated Cayman law or conducted any New York, NY 10123 waterboard them you couldn’t find out who owned the corporation or what 0 2 o. n e u s s i to the Cayman Islands itself. Most of the witness state- Exist stated that “US officials consistently report other impropriety. the corporation was doing.” ments and subsequent questions dealt with the overall is- that cooperation by the Cayman Islands govern- Many institutions and individuals are attract- T: +1 (212) 829 8196 sue of tax evasion, unrelated to the Cayman Islands. ment in enforcement matters has been good” and ed to the Cayman Islands because of its politi- E: [email protected] W: www.rhesq.com thirdthird quarterquarter 20102010 In fact, one of the hearing’s witnesses who is one of quoted a senior Justice Department official who cal and financial stability and business-friendly

7 2 www.caymanfinancialreview.com www.caymanfinancialreview.com 7 3