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Abstract

This thesis was undertaken to analyse the initiatives of various international regulatory bodies on Offshore Financial Centres (OFCs). This research also examined the current and proposed policies of governments of the developed countries including the United States, United Kingdom and the European Union. This study has used an interpretivist approach and has adopted a Textual-Artifact based strategy to describe the key features of OFCs and related concepts. The study found that globalization and increased technological advances have resulted in large scale expansion of OFCs which led to an erosion of tax bases of multiple nations. The fight against OFCs was initiated by the G7 nations and it was largely driven by international bodies like Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, Financial Action Task Force, Financial Stability Forum and International Monetary Fund. An examination of published literature and reports issued by these regulatory bodies identified OFCs to be the facilitators of crimes like money laundering and tax evasion. This was because OFCs attract foreign investments by offering lenient and flexible regulations towards beneficial ownership reporting, levying low- or no-income tax and providing financial and banking secrecy to their clients. However, the initiatives by the international bodies have been criticised by OFCs as being coercive. The initiatives have failed to make a strong impact due to a lack of coordination and political will to resolve the problem. This dissertation suggests that international community need to adopt a global and standard approach to the issues of OFCs, close loopholes within their own tax regimes, eliminate the advantage of lenient tax systems of the OFCs, agree on a multilateral approach to information sharing and promote corporate transparency through robust national laws.

Course: Criminal Justice - MSc - C2681F

Date Deposited: 2023-05-11

URI/permalink: https://library.port.ac.uk/dissert/dis14130.html