GlennA said:
I am afraid you are wrong there. About 35% of the BVI GDP is from the financial sector but 199,900 of those 200,000 companies are nothing more than a file folder in some filing cabinet on De Castro St. The money is in Lichdenstein or Nevada or Delaware. 99.9% of the principles have never laid eyes on the BVI. There are few reason for any "corporate executive" to come to the BVI to conduct business. The entire corporate records of 99% of those companies can be scanned and emailed anywhere in the world in less than an hour. The occasional Russian oligarch or Arab potentate may fly in to meet his yacht but the only auditors who might fly in will be government regulators tracing down tax scofflaws and they are definitely not high end travelers.
The 35% is from the official GDP. There are many things that are not publicly known. Some people like utmost discretion, again see the Panama papers (not that this is some new insight). Furthermore, would you be surprised that these people would have a disproportionate influence on the government officials, possibly, quite possibly, even more than the voters?
The 'money' is not more in Liechtenstein or Nevada than anywhere else. The fraction of money in physical form (bills, coins etc) worldwide is 8.3% of the total, the rest is numbers in some files. And many of these files are on Castro Street...
Of course you could email your legitimate money to the BVI. But there is a number of people who go through great pains to make sure that it is NOT known where their money is. I have a feeling that the people that use Fonseca Mossack and other companies of their ilk don't choose Panama or the BVI because of the great interest rates or frequent flyer points on their credit card expenses...
I am not talking about 'corporate executives' that need to fly in to do business, or oligarchs meeting their yacht for a vacation. I am talking about people that have A LOT of money and that, for reasons of their own, don't want the US or the EU or other first-world countries know about it. They are not going to send the money with SWIFT or email like you or I would, but they (or their agents) have to deliver certain papers in person.
And this would not work if they go through customs in SJU, STT or SXM. In fact, a few years ago the BVI government explicitly said that they are getting behind in their business because some other Carib nation (I think it was Antigua) built an airport that allows private jets from S. America to fly in directly, without touching US or EU ground.
Aren't all the arguments (some by you) convincing that there is no way this whole endeavor has anything to do with passenger jets?
