OREANDA-NEWS. The Prime Minister of the British Virgin Islands (BVI), Andrew Fahey, told Bloomberg that the government will disclose information about the beneficiaries registered on its territory only when all other countries do. “We will obey, not when the UK pushes it, but when it becomes a world standard”, said Fahi.

In May 2018, the British Parliament passed a law according to which the overseas territories of the kingdom (for example, the Virgin and Cayman Islands) must create public registers of owners of companies registered in them until 2020. Later, London postponed the creation of registers to 2023. “They trade under our flag and must accept our values”, said the representative of the Conservative Party, Andrew Mitchell. Without the openness that these registries provide, it's impossible to identify cases of “smart” money laundering and crime, he noted.

In the British Virgin Islands there are no taxes on the profit of organizations, personal income, as well as VAT and sales taxes. To register a company there, the number of shares of which does not exceed 50 thousand, costs $ 450, the same amount is the annual fee to maintain registration. Such financial services account for 62% of the islands' government revenues, notes the American media.

In total, over 400 thousand companies with assets worth $ 1.5 trillion are registered with BVI, the agency reports. At the same time, the largest country without public registries of beneficiaries of companies is the United States.

Only two employees of the Islands Financial Investigation Agency have full access to the system. Information from BOSS is stored in one of the G7 countries, but not in the US, said Ryan Geluk, an employee of BDO Ltd, who helped create the system. “If someone opens it from an unusual place, like North Korea, it will instantly turn off”, he said.