Search Results for: Antigua

THE EUROPEAN Commission in June (2021) signalled it was running out of patience with Malta and Cyprus over their ‘golden passport’ schemes which allow people investing in these small island nations to effectively buy citizenship. The European Union (EU) executive has long warned that such policies contain significant ML risks, releasing a detailed report in 2019 that highlighted concerns that governments failed to properly screen the source of funds used to gain golden passports.…

From bringing traditionally outsourced services in house to right-sizing staff, Caribbean financial professionals advising the region’s critically important tourism sector are making tough decisions to keep businesses afloat and redundancies to a minimum during Covid-19.

ACCA members speaking to A&B, however testified to solidarity among workers, clients and suppliers – and the resilience of a region used to disaster, albeit usually through extreme weather.…

Entrepreneurship abounds across the diverse island nations of the Caribbean where small, independently-owned beauty product businesses thrive and have been successfully vying for space alongside major international brands in pharmacies, boutiques and family-owned stores alike.

What many manufacturers lack in start-up capital, they make up for in innovation and close proximity to a wealth of organic, raw materials that are finding new favour with modern, discerning consumers at home, with an eye to developing export sales.…

CONCERNS about the environmental and health damage caused by sunscreen chemicals has started to translate into regulatory action around the world, with the US state of Hawaii being the most high-profile reformer.

Hawaii has imposed a state-wide ban on the sale and distribution within Hawaii of products containing oxybenzone and octinoxate, which are widely regarded as having a harmful impact on coral.…

From climate change to digitalisation, there is no shortage of economic challenges facing the small island states of the Caribbean, but the region’s accounting sector has the capacity to manage upcoming change.

For many such financial professionals, being a part of ACCA – which this year will mark its 20^th in the region – is integral to progress.…

From climate change to digitalisation, there is no shortage of economic challenges facing the small island states of the Caribbean, but the region’s accounting sector has the capacity to manage upcoming change.

For many such financial professionals, being a part of ACCA – which this year will mark its 20^th in the region – is integral to progress.…

CONTRACTORS at Sint Maarten’s hurricane-battered airport are battling against the clock to complete major repairs by the start of the new tourist season in November.

Princess Juliana International Airport was one of several across the Caribbean pummeled by catastrophic Hurricane Irma in September 2017.…

The South Pacific’s Cook Islands (population: 11,700) and Niue (population: 1,600), both largely autonomous jurisdictions in free association with New Zealand, have in the past been accused by international AML experts as being tax havens that facilitate money laundering. But reforms indicate that AML/CFT controls are tightening.…

RUNNING a complex international air travel business that recovering from 2017’s devastating hurricane season, Caribbean airline boss Julie Reifer-Jones is having to draw on her near three decades’ experience in senior financial management.

Immaculately presented, in killer heels, Reifer-Jones FCCA is not just the first female CEO of Antigua-based airline LIAT, she is the only female CEO of any airline in the Caribbean.…

THE CARIBBEAN may be a small and fragmented regional market but it is a hotbed of innovation in the personal care product industry, and a potential source of inspiration in formulation and ingredients for major brands.

Its island nations, politically independent and dependent territories, have long relied especially on the nearby USA for imports.…

US prosecutors have secured their first conviction in a case involving widespread corruption at the United Nations. Last Thursday (January 14), Heidi Hong Piao, a Chinese-American national pleaded guilty to two counts of conspiracy, money laundering, bribery and failure to disclose foreign bank accounts to tax authorities.…

THE EUROPEAN Commission may block or impose conditions on a planned acquisition by US-based Cargill of the industrial chocolate business of its American rival Archer Daniels Midland (ADM). The European Union (EU) executive’s directorate general for competition has opened an in-depth investigation into the deal, to assess whether it could damage the availability of reasonably priced supplies of this key confectionery input.…

Antigua-based accountant Laura Lyn, who trained as a CPA in Florida and has 20 years’ experience in finance, said accounting and auditing standards had seen much improvement in the region in recent years. Better skilled accountants, she said, were having a positive impact on the financial management standards of Caribbean public bodies and government departments generally.…

Caribbean jurisdictions may be increasingly signing up to the requirements of America’s Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act (FATCA) but there is no great enthusiasm about it. Indeed, some bankers fear it could lead to a sharp fall in the region’s charms for investors.…

THE ORGANISATION for Economic Cooperation & Development (OECD) has concluded that five jurisdictions need to improve their tax information exchange standards – Andorra, Anguilla (a UK dependent territory), Antigua & Barbuda, Indonesia and Saint Lucia. The OECD’s Global Forum on Transparency and Exchange of Information for Tax Purposes said these jurisdictions were “partially compliant” with its standards.…

THE CARIBBEAN is maybe the most culturally diverse region in the world and this has been reflected in its colourful, tasty and varied cuisine. So it is no surprise that the region’s confectionery sector is innovative, drawing on unusual combinations of ingredients that create tasty products that could serve as inspiration for companies around the world.…

The Caribbean island state of Antigua & Barbuda has needed to demonstrate its thriving online gaming sector is protected against money laundering, to gather diplomatic support for its campaign against US bans on Americans gambling on its websites.

Faced with evidence that criminals can exploit the sector to transfer dirty cash between players’ accounts, before investing it in assets such as shares or real estate, Antigua in 1994 became one of the first countries to provide licences for online gambling operators.…

BY ROBERT STOKES

CARIBBEAN jurisdictions are stereotypically seen as information black-holes whose minimal filing requirements for companies and trusts facilitate fraud.

Think Stanford International Bank and Westbond International Bank, two Antigua based vehicles for high-profile Ponzi schemes. Also, the Madoff scandal in the USA led to the liquidators of Fairfield Sentry – a British Virgin Islands (BVI) domiciled hedge fund that was among Madoff’s main victims – unsuccessfully trying to claim back money from investors who had legally withdrawn money from Sentry.…

BY LEAH GERMAIN

SWINDLER, liar, bully and briber, R. Allen Stanford was once one of the world’s wealthiest men. With a net worth of USD 2 billion, the Texas-born financier lived a life of lavish luxury, with yachts, airplanes and an international bank to call his own.…

BY LEAH GERMAIN

WITH what was once an estimated net worth of over USD2 billion, R. Allen Stanford was once revered as one of the wealthiest men in America. Yet a Texas court has now heard in detail that his wealth, which he displayed in both opulent and lavish ways, was derived from ill-gotten gains.…

BY LEAH GERMAIN

THE GOLDEN rule of investments has and continues to be – if it seems too good to be true, it probably is. The most recent example of this advice being disregarded causing a high profile court case involves R Allen Stanford, Texan-banker and former multi-millionaire.…

BY LEAH GERMAIN, IN EDMONTON

THE TRIAL of Texas-banker Allen Stanford, accused of defrauding investors out of US dollars USD7 billion began in a Houston court room on Tuesday January 24th, nearly three years after the original charges were laid. Mr Stanford, who owned and operated the Antigua-based Stanford International Bank, was originally arrested in 2009 and is accused of 14 different counts of defrauding over 30,000 investors from over 113 countries.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL

PEER review reports on tax rules coordinated by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation & Development (OECD) have attacked jurisdictions over tax information law weaknesses, including the UK. It had "insufficient mechanisms…to identify owners of bearer shares and…restrictive…statutory information gathering powers," said the OECD.…

BY GERARD O’DWYER

IF there is one region where high standards in fighting money laundering and terrorist finance are expected, it is surely the five Nordic states: Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Finland and Iceland. Notwithstanding the criticism leveled at Iceland’s financial regulators during the credit crunch, all five countries have admirable traditions of public openness, government efficiency and international cooperation, especially amongst themselves.…

BY KASHMIR HILL

TEXAS financier R Allen Stanford built an US$8.5-billion Caribbean banking empire catering to 30,000 customers in 131 countries, but this year Stanford was indicted for swindling those investors in a massive, ongoing fraud. The US government is calling it a Ponzi scheme that defrauded investors of US$7 billion, making it the second largest of the era after Bernie Madoff’s.…

BY ALAN OSBORN, in London, and SUZANNE KOELEGA, in Sint Maarten, Dutch West Indies

AS with much of life today, the future of gambling is closely tied to the Internet, and this development of an international industry based on instant cross-border cash flows has raised understandable concerns about money laundering.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL

THE SAFETY certification of airports in the eastern Caribbean requires significant reform, an International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO) report has stressed. Drawing on Universal Safety Oversight Audit Programme (USOAP) assessments, it raised concerns about airports in Trinidad & Tobago; Jamaica; Antigua & Barbuda; Grenada; St Kitts & Nevis; St.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL

THE EUROPEAN Commission has initialled new fishing access deals with two African island nations: São Tomé e Principe, off west Africa, and Madagascar, in the Indian Ocean. The Madagascan deal will last six years from January 2007, and exclusively covers tuna.…

BY WESLEY GIBBINGS, in Port of Spain, Trinidad

WITH its multiple small jurisdictions, offshore tax havens and proximity to both drug producing countries in Latin America and the United States, the Caribbean has always been a focus of global anti-money laundering efforts.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE ROLE of the Caribbean as a staging point for ill-gotten gains goes back to the trans-Atlantic misadventures of the first European ships over 400 years ago. It would appear some habits die hard. Wesley Gibbings reports from Port of Spain, Trinidad.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
AS a truly global criminal problem, it is only right that fighting money laundering is a key priority of the United Nations (UN). Its general assembly and key committees have made declarations and approved conventions on the subject, and its specialist agencies have also devoted time, money, specialist staff and energy to fighting the problem.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Union (EU) and 16 Caribbean countries have launched negotiations to strike a trade deal by 2008, that should boost Jamaican bauxite exports into Europe. The mineral is already the eastern Caribbean’s largest non-food export to the EU, (eight per cent of all the region’s foreign sales being aluminium-related products – worth around Euro 223 million in 2003).…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Union (EU) and 16 Caribbean countries have launched negotiations to strike a 2008 trade deal, that should boost rum exports into Europe. The spirit is already the eastern Caribbean’s largest export to the EU, (11 per cent of sales – worth around Euro 320 million in 2003), with import quota restrictions removed from 2000.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
NOBODY likes to be on a blacklist, especially one written by the American government. But every year, the US state department issues a comprehensive rogues gallery of countries involved in the narcotics trade and related criminal problems. One surprising entrant: the United States.…

BY MARK WILSON
AWASH with recently-passed legislation and newly-established Financial Investigation Units, the small nations of the Caribbean have transformed their money laundering controls since the mid-1990s. In 2000, five Caribbean island jurisdictions made up one-third of the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) list of fifteen non-cooperative countries and territories, each of them with ‘serious systemic problems,’ in the words of a FATF review published on June 22 of that year.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL in Paris, ALAN OSBORN in London, MARK ROWE in Singapore, ED PETERS and DON GASPER in Hong Kong, RICHARD HURST in Johannesburg, MONICA DOBIE and PHILIP FINE in Montreal, MATTHEW BRACE in Brisbane and ALEX SMAILES in Port of Spain.…