Independence and the finance industry - time for a REAL discussion

"They're planning on doing what?"

What's even better than one finance industry stooge pissing himself?

That's right - two finance industry stooges pissing themselves!

You might say that British MPs Andrew Mitchell and Margaret Hodge have been getting a bit of criticism as of late for their plans to strongarm British crown dependencies and overseas territories into introducing public registers of beneficial ownership.

This has, of course, been done before - Mitchell and Hodge are veterans of the struggle against the organised, legalised system of mass theft that is the offshore financial system - but it comes at a time when Theresa May's zombie government, desperate to scrape up enough votes to pass their Brexit deal, will jump on any old wagon to buy a few more MPs to their cause.

In other words - it's for real this time.

This hasn't really gone down well in the halls of power.

Now, anyone can see that JLF, St Pier and co. are running scared, that they're desperate to knock up the sort of supposedly impenetrable constitutional argument that Jersey, Guernsey and other tax-avoidance hives of villainy have used for years, that it constitutes colonialism for the British state to interfere in the day-to-day affairs of crown dependencies. Anyone can also see that this is a bust-up between two sections of the same international capitalist class - one that anyone who is both an anti-imperialist and an anti-capitalist has no dog in - but the thing which has really wound me up with the discussion around all this is the whisperings of "independence".

I didn't used to believe in Jersey independence - I didn't used to identify myself as a nationalist, and I remain somewhat skeptical about movements towards independence while we remain within a capitalist system. James Connolly famously once said that "If you remove the English army tomorrow and hoist the green flag over Dublin Castle, unless you set about the organization of the Socialist Republic your efforts would be in vain. England would still rule you. She would rule you through her capitalists, through her landlords, through her financiers, through the whole array of commercial and individualist institutions she has planted in this country and watered with the tears of our mothers and the blood of our martyrs." - English imperialism is more than political influence and the occasional bit of "advice" from our friends at the Home Office. However, I've always found the dialogue around independence whenever a tax crackdown is mooted to be incredibly insulting and offensive. It's like we've been so co-opted by international capital, so "Anglo-Saxon-ised", that the only point at which we'd consider asserting ourselves is if our ability to get away with robbing the British taxpayer blind was potentially compromised. 

Jersey is so, so much more than the finance industry. We have our own language, our own culture - we form a nation, albeit one without a nation-state. We have a different climate, a different way of thinking about things, a different way of doing things - we aren't English, and we never will be. I was never attracted to Jèrriais nationalism on economic grounds - it's about who we are, what this island represents. 

Too often, the arguments for and against independence are reduced to "muh finance industry". Rubbish! As the 21st century matures, Jèrriais grows, and the finance industry inevitably declines, the discussion about independence is something we're going to have to have at one point or another. That discussion, when we do have it, has to be of substance, it has to mean something - it cannot be "it's the economy, stupid". 

Jersey has enough problems with internalised racism as it is. We are already a cog in the death machine that is international finance - our language is already on life support. 

We do not need to debase the discussion about asserting ourselves as a nation by worrying about what international capitalists think.

Dirty deals with rogue regimes

"The 15 officers who arrived at the prison in southern Yemen hid their faces behind head dresses, but their accents were clearly foreign. They lined up the detainees and ordered them to undress and lie down. The officers then searched the anal cavity of each prisoner, claiming that they were looking for contraband mobile phones. The men screamed and wept. Those who resisted were threatened by barking dogs and beaten until they bled." - Al Jazeera, Yemeni prisoners say UAE officers sexually torture them: AP, 20th of July 2018

The United Arab Emirates is, as the saying goes, a small country with big ideas.

A regime accused by the UN of slaughtering thousands of civilians in airstrikes over Yemen, alleged by Qatar to be running a network of clandestine prisons for sexual and psychological torture, and under investigation by British police for arbitrary detention and torture of British nationals.

Secret foreign prisons where reports have found that "individuals endured rape at the hands of coalition forces and were subjected to electrocution in the genitals, chest and armpits" and "electric cables were used alongside wooden bats and steel poles during the interrogation sessions".

A justice system described by human rights lawyers as "a system which is abused by individuals in positions of power and a complete vacuum of accountability".

Systematic abuse of Asian domestic workers within a system repeatedly called "21st century slavery" or a "culture of slavery".

And, according to our esteemed External Relations minister, a government that are our new best mates!

Last week, our man in the Middle East, or indeed whichever other violently nasty dictatorship you require a friendly relationship with, returned from a trip to the fakest land on Earth, the UAE. I'm sure the independentista crowd were delighted to hear that from now on, Jersey is a big boy now and so we can be trusted to negotiate our own trade deals, independent of UK government say-so.

Who are our brand, shiny new first partners in international commerce? Why, a murderous absolute monarchy which executes queer people and backs al-Qaeda, of course!

I think it's safe to say that we've reached the point in the life of a tax haven where any sense of maintaining some sort of reasonable international reputation has gone completely out the window at this point.

Real talk here for a second.

Diplomacy is tough stuff, and it often involves sitting down and talking with people you neither agree with nor particularly like. Many regimes in the world may not share your values, and practically none share mine, but sitting down with people you don't share values with is part of building a more peaceful world. However, if it wasn't clear from the above, the UAE is not just your bog-standard authoritarian regime. They are a rabidly violent and extremely nasty supporter of international terrorism, an accomplice of Saudi Arabia in the mass murder of Yemenis - using British weapons - and an economy largely based on the effective slavery of millions of south Asian migrant workers, to the point where Emiratis are a small minority within their own country. They've faced serial condemnation from news outlets, international organisations and the UN for their conduct both at home and abroad, and have been involved in some of the worst torture operations since "extraordinary rendition" and "enhanced interrogation techniques".

Basically, these are some really nasty people.

It gets worse.

According to today's rag, it's been confirmed that our second trade deal as an independent negotiator will be with those paragons of virtue, the government of Rwanda. I've discussed Rwanda before on this blog, back when the Jersey Overseas Aid Commission - was getting all in a tizz during the row over Arsenal's links to the Rwandan government. You can read the original blog, "Jersey's support for the racist Rwandan dictatorship" - but by way of summary, Rwanda is a totalitarian ethnostate run on pre-1959, colonial lines, with members of the minority Tutsi ethnic group - including Paul Kagame and his former terrorist band turned governing party, the Rwandan Patriotic Front - filling up virtually all governmental positions and members of the majority Hutu ethnic group reduced to their former status as second-class citizens. It's also, surprise surprise, known for having a serious torture problem - Human Rights Watch, interviewing an ex-prisoner from Rwanda known as Ernest (not his real name) wrote "Ernest said that when he refused to confess, soldiers “brought a plastic bag and put it over my head and started to ask questions. After a few minutes, when they saw that I was suffocating, they stopped.” He said they suffocated him four more times until he defecated on himself. “I thought I was going to die,” Ernest told us."

Our wonderful new partners, everyone. Isn't globalisation great?

The Sark Crisis - a constitutional precedent about to be set?

"Bad boys, bad boys whatcha gonna do? 
Whatcha gonna do when they come for you? 
Bad boys, bad boys whatcha gonna do? 
Whatcha gonna do when they come for you?" - Bob Marley, Bad Boys

Regular readers of the local rag will remember that about a fortnight ago, former senator, Establishment kingpin and anti-democratic criminal Philip Bailhache had a letter published in the paper which attacked comments made by Labour MP and tax haven-buster Margaret Hodge, where she accused Jersey of funneling "dirty money" and pressed the States to bring Jersey into line with transparency standards and make the Island's beneficial ownership register publicly accessible. I didn't write about this at the time, but recent goings-on in Sark have breathed some new life into the standard finance industry back and forth and made this a pretty interesting case to look at. Bailhache argues in his letter that to use crown powers or dictate legislation to Jersey would be "unconstitutional", and therefore that Hodge should butt out.

However, the political crisis on Sark in recent weeks seems to have cast a wee bit of a shadow over this standard defense of Jersey's outrageous financial law.

A bit of backstory. Eight years ago, in 2010, a UK select committee made an assessment, which at the time was agreed with by the UK government, that "just as the establishment of democratic government in Sark was a matter of good government, any threat to the ability of that system to operate fairly and robustly has the potential to raise good government issues which might require UK Government intervention". Last month, Sark's infamously undemocratic legislature, the Chief Pleas, failed to pass a budget. Following this, the island's Finance and Resources Committee resigned, as well as the island's one civil servant. As well as this, it has now been over six years since Sark had a contested election. Following this effective collapse of the island's government, the UK minister responsible for crown dependencies, Lord Richard "arse!" Keen, wrote a letter to the Chief Pleas, informing them that "I am aware that urgent measures have been implemented to manage the situation but it is nonetheless a serious state of affairs in which Sark now finds itself" and that "‘I therefore wish to have your assessment of the implications for the good government of the island", the implication being that Sark's political independence is on the chopping block if the Chief Pleas can't produce a functional government with a decent democratic mandate and an upsized professional civil service.

Considering that politicians in Sark aren't even paid and the island is in such a poor state that Sark Electricity are threatening to cut the electricity (which also means cutting the water, which means a public health emergency and the evacuation of the island en masse), personally I'm not exactly holding my breath.

So, what does this mean for Jersey?

The key question here, I suppose, is: could this also happen to Jersey?

Sark is a royal fief and part of the Bailiwick of Guernsey, meaning it has an identical relationship to the UK to the one between the UK and Jersey. It follows on from this that, should the UK government be in the mood (and the possibility of a Corbyn government in the near future means that it's likely enough that they will be), Jersey's political independence could also be under threat if there was judged to have been a "breakdown in good government". Anyone who knows what happened to Stuart Syvret, knows of the serial and blatant corruption and intimidation engaged in by senior politicians and legal officials, knows of the total non-existence of the rule of law on this island. knows full well that if the UK government was so inclined they would have more than sufficient grounds under this "breakdown of good government" requirement to step in, start asking questions, and, ultimately, start dictating legislation.

So, the answer is: yes, this could absolutely happen to Jersey.

What are the gangsters running the island planning to do if London comes a'knocking? The evidence is there - the witnesses exist - the scandals and corruption are there for you to read about on public forums. Everyone knows it, and some people braver and cleverer than me are able to expose it in all its detailed and horrific glory. When the Brits step in, when this stuff is on the front pages of every newspaper in the country, when their buddies in the City hang them out to dry - what are they going to do?

To quote the esteemed Chief Executive of the States of Jersey: "There will be casualties".

And you probably aren't wrong in thinking that one Philip Bailhache will be chief among them.

Jersey Finance funds pro-tax haven report

Jersey Finance, the non-profit banking cabal responsible for whitewashing Jersey's international image as a tax haven, has been funneling money to hard-right UK lobbyists to produce a pro-finance industry report, it has emerged. 

The Institute of Economic Affairs, a UK-based Thatcherite "think tank" and lobbying group founded by a disciple of the far-right economist Friedrich Hayek and behind campaigns against the National Health Service and plain packaging for tobacco products and in favour of zero-hours contracts and unpaid internships, produced a report in June defending tax havens like Jersey and Guernsey and arguing against the ongoing international crackdown on dirty money and tax avoidance. An investigation by UK authorities was launched after allegations that senior politicians were given access to and editorial say in the report in return for donations, which has in turn revealed a link to Jersey. Jersey Finance have admitted that they helped fund the propaganda research, donating an undisclosed amount to the IEA, but have denied having any editorial control over the content of the document.

Well, well, well! I should probably make it clear before we get into the real criticism here that the IEA are, as think tanks go, about as dodgy as you can get. They don't reveal their sources of funding as a matter of policy, but investigations by various organisations and news outlets have found them taking money from the casino industry, tobacco companies such as British-American Tobacco and Imperial Tobacco, oil companies such as BP and from assorted American businessmen set to potentially benefit from Brexit and from the continued relative weakness of trade unions. What a surprise, then, that the IEA has campaigned for the expansion of the British gambling industry and against plain packaging for tobacco products, tobacco taxation, trade unions and in favour of a hard Brexit. Rated by the the accountability group Transparify as "highly opaque", the IEA featured near the very bottom of their list of most transparent to least transparent think tanks inside the EU. When their Head of Health and Welfare isn't too busy asserting that "all doctors are communists", he's been laying a nice consistent shit on the idea of the IEA ever revealing its sources of funding.

Speaking of funding, guess who funds Jersey Finance. You guessed it - you and I! JF is a non-profit that's partially funded by the taxpayer (although a significant amount of its funding does come from Jersey's banks and other financial institutions). That's right, ladies and gents, who paid for this propaganda organisation to dish out cash to laissez-faire capitalist loons, to produce a whitewashing report criticising the international community for daring to try and hold these institutions to account? Joe Public, that's who, along with the bankers the report lavishes praise on. Now, call me old-fashioned, but something in me doesn't exactly sit right with the idea of taxpayers' money being shipped off to the UK to pay for hard-right lobbyists to attempt to prop up the quickly-collapsing international system of dirty money being hidden in offshore tax havens like Jersey. The fact that an organisation like Jersey Finance even receives public funding is a disgrace - at a time when economic diversification is urgently needed to slow the inevitable collapse of the finance industry, we should not be splashing cash on Thatcherite propaganda. Of course, the usual suspects will carp on about how the left ideologically hates finance, how we want to destroy the economy, how we don't understand the island's economic reality, and whatever else. Rubbish. Sooner or later, the financial establishment over here is going to have to wake up to the fact that actually, the dodgy system off of which they thrive isn't going to last forever, and when it goes, unless something is gone, our entire economy goes with it. Decades of neglect for any other industry, which is only beginning to be repaired, has left Jersey a one-trick pony, and one day, the trick's going to stop fooling people.

There's a really simple choice here - we diversify, or we die.

Pushing cash into pro-tax haven propaganda isn't exactly going to help.

Jersey's support for the Rwandan dictatorship

Ian Gorst with Rwandan dictator Paul Kagame

The Jersey Overseas Aid Commission has defended its financial aid to the central African country of Rwanda as a row breaks out over the country's sponsorship deal with Arsenal football club.

The African state, which has been de facto ruled by President Paul Kagame and his racist Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) since 1994, is to spend £30 million on a sponsorship deal with Arsenal to promote tourism - the footballers will wear "Visit Rwanda" on their t-shirts - while receiving handouts of upwards of £60 million a year from the UK in poverty relief programs, as well as over £2.5 million from Jersey since 2008.

Since 1994, Rwanda has been ruled by the Rwandan Patriotic Front, a former terrorist organisation that seized power against the backdrop of the 1994 Rwandan genocide. Dominated by the Tutsi, the minority ethnic group that ruled the pre-colonial and colonial era Kingdom of Rwanda, the RPF was founded in 1987 as an outgrowth of the Rwandese Alliance for National Unity, an organisation of Tutsi refugees thrown out of Rwanda by the majority Hutu people in the 1959 revolution. Enslaved for centuries by the Tutsi, and later the Tutsi's Belgian colonial allies, the Hutu revolt was sparked by the assassination of a Hutu chief by radical Tutsis - many Tutsis fled Rwanda as a result of the revolution.

The RPF's objectives were simple. They aimed to invade Rwanda, removing the Hutu government by force and restoring Tutsi minority rule. Backed by the United States, in 1990 the RPF invaded Rwanda, beginning a four-year civil war in which hundreds of thousands died. In 1994, as the government and social order collapsed against the genocide of Tutsis by extremist Hutu nationalist militias, the RPF eliminated remaining Hutu resistance and took control of the country, ending the violence but restoring Tutsi minority rule. Kagame, originally styling himself as vice-president but officially becoming president in 2000, has since suppressed opposition, placed heavy restrictions on freedom of speech and association, murdered opponents and generally established a violent and authoritarian society. Under the guise of preventing further sectarian violence (and shamelessly exploiting Tutsi fears of further genocide), Kagame has overseen the introduction of a new constitution that effectively turned Rwanda into a one-party state. He was re-elected in 2003, 2010 and 2017, unsurprisingly receiving 95%, 93% and 98% of the vote.

Has this stopped our dictator-loving Chief Minister from cosying up to Kagame and his government? Of course not. Has this stopped the Overseas Aid Commission from pouring money into Rwanda? Of course not.

Is it actually surprising that our oligarchic, tyrant-friendly government is getting in bed with racist African tinpot dictators?

Of course not.

Gorst scrambles to defend the indefensible

Those dastardly Brits, trying to make us more transparent!

The Chief Minister has said he will "resist all attempts" from the UK Parliament to create a transparent, public register of beneficial ownership that could reveal who owns assets in companies registered in Crown Dependencies and Overseas Territories such as Jersey. The Labour Party and (it is believed) a significant number of Tories are due to vote in favour of an amendment to the Sanctions and Anti-Money Laundering Bill by Labour MP Margaret Hodge due to be debated in the House of Commons on Tuesday.

Gorst's response to this attempt to end dodgy secret ownership of companies based in tax havens like Jersey? This is "unconstitutional" and "impossible to force on our island without our consent". His defense of Jersey's system was that we already have a register of beneficial ownership - one that isn't publicly accessible (wouldn't do for the plebs to be able to see where the 1% are hiding their dosh). I find it amazing how shamelessly Gorst hides behind constitutionalism to defend a broken, immoral system that hides the wealth of the rich and helps them avoid their most basic responsibility to society. Our finance industry is a machine that enables the rich and powerful to evade paying into the society that enabled them to become wealthy, actively starving other nations of what's rightfully theirs. Gorst's shameless constitutional defense is pretty disgusting - I'm not usually Mr Pro-Britain, but if there's one thing the UK Gov. should be forcing on us, it's this.