The Spider’s Web "An investigation into the world of Britain’s secrecy jurisdictions and the City of ."

A Film by Michael Oswald

2017 Official Selections Cine Pobre I ARFF I IFFS

www.spiderswebfilm.com

TRT: 78min I MPAA: Unrated I Release Date: 2017

Country: UK I Language: English I Genre: Documentary Feature

Colour I Aspect Ratio: 1920 x 850 I Sound: Stereo Mix I Format: PAL 25p

Sales Agent Kazz Basma Sideways Film 7 Bouverie Mews Bouverie Road London N16 0AE Tel: +44 (0) 788 147 3603 Email: [email protected]

Synopsis:

The Spider’s Web: Britain's Second Empire, is a documentary film that shows how Britain transformed from a colonial power into a global financial power. At the demise of empire, City of London financial interests created a web of offshore secrecy jurisdictions that captured wealth from across the globe and hid it behind obscure financial structures in a web of offshore islands. Today, up to half of global offshore wealth may be hidden in British offshore jurisdictions and Britain and its offshore jurisdictions are the largest global players in the world of international finance. How did this come about, and what impact does it have on the world today? This is what the Spider's Web sets out to investigate.

With contributions from leading experts, academics, former insiders and campaigners for social justice, the use of stylized b-roll and archive footage, the Spider’s Web reveals how in the world of international finance, corruption and secrecy have prevailed over regulation and transparency, and the UK is right at the heart of this.

Michael Oswald Statement:

Nicholas Shaxson's "Treasure Islands" had been on my reading list for many years, by the time I finally picked it up I did so not expecting that it would take me on a journey to a documentary. Tax Havens and financial secrecy are never out of the press these days, and so when I made contact with Nicholas Shaxson to see if he would be willing to take part in yet another documentary on the topic he replied he would but diplomatically added that, "the field is slowly becoming more crowded." After reading "Treasure Islands," I realized that there was an interesting, coherent and self-contained story that had not been told, the story of Britain's transformation from a colonial power to a financial power, and the myriad and obscure financial structures created by City of London financial interests that lie at the heart of this transformation. Today, Britain and its dependencies are by far the largest global player in the world of financial secrecy and international finance. This documentary explores how Britain came to hold this position and what impact this has had on Britain and the world.

After 4 months of research and writing, the various parts of the story began to fall into place. It also became apparent that there was one person who had already figured this story out, that person was John Christensen, a former economic adviser to . John Christensen agreed to be a producer on this film and his expertise and experience have been invaluable in its production, together we settled on The Spider's Web as a suitable title, a term first coined by James S. Henry, a Senior Advisor to the , to describe Britain's network of offshore financial secrecy jurisdictions.

I'd like to give special thanks to Sean Boucher who spent 4 months working with me and wrote the majority of the soundtrack, and Executive Producer Simeon Roberts who will make sure the film reaches the widest possible audience. It would take too long to individually thank every person who contributed to the film, or the numerous translators who will be making the film available in their respective languages. This film received no funding, it is thanks to everyone who was willing to give their time and expertise that its creation was possible. We sent hundreds of emails to broadcasters and funding bodies, but not a single one deemed the film worthy of support. We disagree, we think this film is interesting and relevant in today's world and we hope you think so too.

In the days of Empire, Britain transferred the mineral and commodity wealth of its imperial possessions back to Britain. Britain's empire is a modern version of this wealth extraction. Britain is a complex country where corruption is hidden behind multiple layers and those ultimately responsible are difficult to identify. I hope this film will help shine a light on part of this obscurity and contribute to the creation of a world where financial rules and regulations are to the relative benefit of all players and apply to all participants equally regardless of their position or importance.

John Christensen's Statement:

In 1956, with its Empire collapsing in the wake of the Suez crisis, Britain faced political and economic crisis. As Sterling came under intense pressure, the Bank of England took an extraordinary step; without fanfare or public scrutiny it allowed London-based banks to shift their international lending from pounds to dollars.

Importantly, the Bank chose to not regulate this new ‘offshore’ market since these transactions could be deemed to be happening ‘elsewhere’, even though in reality the trades occurred in British sovereign space. Quite where ‘elsewhere’ is was of no concern to the Bank; the important thing, from the point of view of London banks, was that no other regulatory authority – not even the U.S. Federal Reserve – had the power to regulate this new market, which became known as the Eurodollar market.

I was born in 1956 and grew up in the British Channel Island of Jersey. As a teenager I witnessed Jersey’s transformation into an offshore satellite of the City of London. In the 1960s, as the Eurodollar market exploded in scale, British banks (not to mention banks from Canada, France, Germany, India, the Netherlands, Switzerland and the United States), rushed to take part in this unregulated bonanza, and then established offshore subsidiaries and branches in where they could book their profitable trades without paying UK taxes.

Business boomed. And not only in Jersey. With support from British government departments, other British dependencies vied for a slice of the action. Bermuda chased the offshore reinsurance market. The British Cayman Islands chased business from North America. Anguilla, the British Virgin Islands, Gibraltar, the Turks & Caicos islands, and others, also piled in to offshore financial services.

By the mid-1970s, as I left school, the Eurodollar market had grown so big that it was larger than the global stock of foreign exchange reserves. And with wealth pouring in from across the planet, London and its offshore satellites were booming. For the City bankers and their colleagues in Cayman and the Channel Islands it seemed you truly could have your cake and eat it.

But not everyone was convinced about the merits of this exercise in unregulated financial markets. In February 1978 I joined a working group of Oxfam policy wonks in London. They were discussing the roots of poverty in resource-rich countries African and Latin American countries, and had noticed huge unaccounted outflows of wealth from these continents, almost all of which appeared to head northwards to Europe and North America via offshore secrecy jurisdictions.

While we didn’t fully understand the mechanisms that enabled these outflows, we had no doubt that the scale of capital flight was so enormous that it was thwarting the development of entire nations. We also had no doubt that the City of London was a major player in this process of looting poorer countries of their wealth and in protecting Britain’s secrecy jurisdiction satellites from political attempts – at the United Nations, for example – to rectify the policy and regulatory flaws that enabled capital flight and tax dodging on such an immense scale.

In 1979, after finishing my professional training as a forensic investigator, I decided to make tax havens the focus of my research, first at university and subsequently as an offshore practitioner. That explains why, in 1985, I headed south from London on my motorcycle to Portsmouth and then on by ferry to Jersey, where I worked undercover as an insider for almost thirteen years.

This was the start of a journey into the dark heart of tax havenry, taking me from working for one of the global Big Four accounting firms to being appointed economic adviser to the government of Jersey. Along the way I spoke with hundreds of bankers, lawyers, accountants, officials from the senior Whitehall departments, at the OECD in Paris, and the IMF in Washington, seeing at first hand the downright criminality of the pinstripe infrastructure of professionals who operate from secrecy jurisdictions like Jersey.

I also discovered that secrecy jurisdictions had moved from being minor players on the economic periphery to becoming the beating core of financial capitalism, with London as its epicentre.

The Cast:

Alex Cobham – Development Economist: Alex Cobham is the Director of the Tax Justice Network and a visiting fellow at King’s College London IDI. He is on the board of trustees of numerous charities and research bodies. He publishes extensively on illicit financial flows, taxation and inequality. http://uncounted.org/ https://twitter.com/alexcobham

Joel Benjamin – Environmentalist and Campaigner for Financial Reform: Joel Benjamin is a co-founder of Community Reinvest, as well as a campaigner for Debt Resistance UK, Move Your Money UK and People vs PFI. http://communityreinvest.org.uk/ https://twitter.com/Gian_TCatt

Nicholas Shaxson – Author and Journalist: Nicholas Shaxson is the author of the acclaimed book Treasure Islands, an extensive éxpose on the global consequences of tax havens. He has written for The , , Vanity Fair, the Economist and the BBC, as well as many other publications. http://treasureislands.org/ https://twitter.com/nickshaxson

John Christensen - Investigative Economist and Activist: John Christensen is the co-founder and former executive director of the Tax Justice Network. His investigations into the role of tax havens in the globalised economy started in 1978, and have included fourteen years working on the tax haven of Jersey. He is a vocal critic of tax havens and is today described as Jersey's most prominent dissident. http://www.taxjustice.net/ https://twitter.com/@TaxJusticeNet

Eva Joly - MEP, Europe Écologie: Eva Joly is a French anti-corruption activist, magistrate and MEP for the Europe Écologie political party. She is the Vice-Chair of the Panama Committee of Inquiry to investigate alleged contraventions and maladministration in the application of Union law in relation to money laundering, and tax evasion. She was an investigating magistrate in a number of high profile corruption cases, including the Elf Scandal, which the UK Guardian called 'the biggest fraud inquiry in Europe since the Second World War...'. http://www.europarl.europa.eu/meps/en/96883/EVA_J OLY_home.html https://twitter.com/EvaJoly

Michael Hudson – Economist: Michael Hudson is a former Wall Street analyst and consultant, he is a Professor of Economics at the University of Missouri. He is one of the world's leading economists and acts as an economic advisor to governments worldwide. http://michael-hudson.com/

Prem Sikka – Professor of Accounting: Prem Sikka is Professor of Accounting at the University of Essex. He is a prolific writer and a vocal critique of the abuses of the accountancy and finance professions. He is the recipient of a lifetime achievement award from the British Accounting and Finance Association. https://twitter.com/premnsikka

Ronen Palan – Professor of International Politics: Ronen Palan is a professor at City University in London. He has written numerous books and articles on tax havens and the world of offshore. He is a founding editor of the Review of International Political Economy. https://www.city.ac.uk/people/academics/ronen-palan

Stuart Syvret – Activist: Stuart Syvret is a former Jersey Senator, whistleblower and political activist. He is an outspoken critic of the corruption taking place within the Jersey Government. http://freespeechoffshore.nl/stuartsyvretblog/ https://twitter.com/StuartSyvret

Dr. Attiya Waris - University of Nairobi, School of Law: Attiya Waris is a Kenyan academic whose interests include tax justice and human rights in developing countries. She is the Author of a number of books and articles on development, tax and human rights in developing countries. https://fiscallawafrica.wordpress.com/ https://twitter.com/attiyawaris

The Occupy Tour of the City of London: Paul Gilbert and Susan Steed are tour guides at Occupy London Tours. Occupy London Tours is a free walking tours collective, run by volunteers, who want to throw open the secretive world of finance and politics for all to see. http://occupytours.org/city-of-london https://twitter.com/occupytours

Peter Cain – Historian: Peter Cain is a British historian well known for his radical critiques of imperialism. He is the co-author of the book British Imperialism, a book described as “a milestone in the understanding of British history and imperialism.”

Quotes:

“Essentially the City of London….. created a second British empire.” — Ronen Palan

“These places are deliberately set up to engineer a transfer of wealth away from taxpayers…..towards the insiders, towards the elite.” — Nicholas Shaxson

“In developing countries the offshore system of tax havens has facilitated the looting of these countries by their elites….it has enabled them to steal the money and keep it safe somewhere else.” — Nicholas Shaxson

“We have country after country around the world where the lack of financial transparency about taxation, about ownership, about corruption, has undermined the extent to which governments deliver representative policy making for their citizens.” — Alex Cobham

“Nobody ever thought it would be better to do business with somebody who was anonymous. Who wants to not know who they’re doing business with?” — Alex Cobham

“At one stage HM Treasury argued that they could not release information about the biggest banking fraud in the 20th century [BCCI] as it would impinge on the perpetrators human rights.” — Prem Sikka

“In the US some years ago KPMG were fined 456 million dollars, Ernst and Young were fined, a number of employees went to prison, while here [UK] we don’t do that, we give them knighthoods and government contracts and put them in authoritative positions.” — Prem Sikka

“What you see is a constant revolving door of personnel between the major banks and accountancy firms and various government departments.” — Joel Benjamin

"We know everything today, because we have had the Panama Papers, we have seen it, but we are not able to act upon it. And we are not able to act upon it because this system is really protecting the few people who are benefiting from it." — Eva Joly

"I see in the Panama Committee that I'm sitting in that the only thing that could change this is to have a publicly accessible register of the beneficial ownership of trusts and of all kinds of companies" — Eva Joly

"Every country looks to its foreign exchange rate. Foreign exchange rate is not only imports and exports it’s capital movements. And if you look at the International Monetary Fund's monthly international financial statistics you have sort of a steady balance of trade, a steady emigrants and remittances, what goes up and down are called errors and omissions. What the United Nations and the IMF call errors and omissions are flight capital." — Michael Hudson

"British banks today, just as in the 19th century, don't put their money into British manufacturing, they put their money into real estate speculation, into financial speculation, foreign currency trade. So, the financialisation of London has helped de-industrialise the country, because it has enabled sterling to be supported by this huge inflow of hot money, this inflow of drug dealing money, criminal money and tax evasion money." — Michael Hudson

"The reality is not what you believe, that your Prime Minister has the power to decide on the future of your country, the power is hidden." — Eva Joly

"If you come from the same kind of background and you know the right people then all the kind of legal niceties will often fall away, you can get away with doing all sorts of things." — Nicholas Shaxson

“Britain is more corrupt than most people think, and regulators….seem to be more interested in protecting people who engaged in malpractices.” — Prem Sikka

"We have a new Mafia in town, it does not actually shoot people, it does not put bullets in their kneecaps, but its trade is just as deadly." — Prem Sikka

“24 hours after we arrived in Jersey Nick [Shaxson] said, have you noticed that we’re being followed….. ever since we arrived we have been followed…..don’t look we’re being followed now.” — John Christensen

"The degree of capture, political capture by the City of London, by the big banks and big law firms is so enormous that the politicians have effectively become their spokespersons." — John Christensen

“I called the government spokesman [Cayman Islands] and he said we’ve had an order from on high that nobody is allowed to speak to you, you are off limits.” — Nicholas Shaxson

“What I find particularly worrying is this merger of corporate interest, of high level finance, and the state. It has a name, and that name is fascism.” — John Christensen

Crew:

Michael Oswald – Director/Producer/Writer: Michael is an independent documentary filmmaker based in London UK. He uses narrative storytelling to produce investigative and observational films. He aims to discover, understand and communicate ideas that are given less attention than they deserve. Previous films include 97% Owned: How is Money Created and Princes of the Yen: Central Banks and the Transformation of the Economy. www.hushhushvideo.com

Sean Adam Boucher – Audio/Music/Production: Sean is a freelance audio engineer from Rhode Island USA. He writes, produces and records music for documentary films and independent creative productions. He also works as a recording and mixing engineer for documentary productions, rock bands and classical music ensembles. Sean is an aspiring documentarian, he aims to inspire positive change through a diversity of creative means including film and music. www.seanadamboucher.com

John Christensen – Producer: John Christensen is the co-founder and executive director of the Tax Justice Network. His investigations into the role of tax havens in the globalised economy started in 1978, and have included fourteen years working on the tax haven of Jersey. He is a vocal critic of tax havens and is today described as Jersey's most prominent dissident. http://www.taxjustice.net

Simeon C. Roberts – Executive Producer: Simeon is an independent producer based in the UK who has worked on a wide range of productions. He served as the editor for an online magazine FilmGods and is now involved in working with filmmakers to engage their projects with audiences. Framedpixel.co.uk

Andrew Piper - Narrator: Trained at the Bristol Old Vic Theatre School, Andrew Piper is an actor, voice over, writer and teacher, as well as a Masters student of Applied Positive Psychology. http://andrew-piper.com/

Jamie Perera - Music Supervisor/Dubbing mix: Jamie Perera is based in London and is featured regularly on film, and television, and on NGO, corporate and commercial media campaigns. He’s a composer and sound designer, specialising in innovative use of sound – for example, making drums out of fists striking the body for a C4 series on gang violence, and sequencing gunshots for an Amnesty campaign on arms sales. He’s recorded and been released worldwide alongside Cinematic Orchestra, Mark Ronson, Lubomyr Melnyk and Matthew Herbert, and has had sonic artwork featured in the V&A, Serpentine Gallery and Camden Arts Centre. http://jamieperera.com/

Daniel Turi - Associate Producer: Daniel is a journalist and documentary filmmaker interested in international politics and current affairs. Before working on the Spider's Web he co-directed and co-wrote The Killing$ of Tony Blair, a feature documentary released in cinemas internationally in 2016. Daniel currently works as a broadcast journalist for Al Jazeera English.

Katharine Round - Associate Producer: Katharine Round is an English documentary filmmaker. She is founder of the production companies Literally Films and Disobedient Films (with Leah Borromeo). She is the co-founder (with Tristan Anderson, Fred Grace and Gemma Atkinson) of Doc Heads; a dedicated documentary screening, networking, and funding organization that promotes the work of documentary filmmakers.

Matthew Swinnerton - Music: Formerly a member The Rakes, Matt is now a songwriter with various artists as well as composing for film.

Credits:

Directed by Michael Oswald

Produced by Michael Oswald and John Christensen

Executive Producer Simeon C. Roberts

Script by Michael Oswald

Narrated by Andrew Piper

Music by Sean Adam Boucher, Matthew Swinnerton & Tim Hecker

Music Supervisor Jamie Perera

Location Audio and post-production Sean Adam Boucher

Cinematography Michael Oswald and Sean Adam Boucher

Editor – Michael Oswald

Associate Producer Daniel Turi & Katharine Round

Dubbing Mix by Jamie Perera

Peter Cain Interview conducted by Paul Gilbert

Michael Hudson Interview conducted by Sean Adam Boucher

Marketing material by Sean Adam Boucher

New York Cameraman Yuri Makarov

Jersey Production Assistant Sachiko Oswald

Malaysia Producer Maran Perianen

Website by Nils Perret

Thanks to Angela Hawkes & Naomi Fowler