Agreement With UK: Extend Information Sharing
“Over this past weekend Bermuda signed an agreement with the UK to extend our programme of sharing beneficial ownership information from Bermuda’s central register,” Premier Michael Dunkley said today, adding that it ”includes expressed reference to our leading status as the only British Overseas Territory to have a continually updated central register already in place.”
The UK’s Guardian recently carried an article saying that the UK crime agency is demanding quicker access to the corporate records of offshore companies in Britain’s overseas territories including the British Virgin Islands, Bermuda and the Cayman Islands.
The Premier said, “Over this past weekend Bermuda signed an agreement with the UK to extend our programme of sharing beneficial ownership information from Bermuda’s central register.
“Bermuda already passes this information to HMRC within 24 hours but will now also open our register to the UK National Crime Agency [NCA], reflecting Bermuda’s long-held commitment to deterring money-laundering and financial crime from our shores.
“The NCA has always had access to Bermuda’s central register via its long-standing criminal cooperation arrangement, but this involved certain time-consuming procedures.
“The new agreement notes that the NCA can now directly approach the Bermuda central register authorities, who maintain the register on behalf of the Minister of Finance, and includes expressed reference to our leading status as the only British Overseas Territory to have a continually updated central register already in place,” concluded the Premier.
It would be interesting to know whether there are any restrictions placed on the NCA’s ability to pass such information along to other countries’ law-enforcement or tax-collection agencies.