Once we were 'poor but honest' now some of us are just poor!

‘Oh for the good old days’! I thought when I saw this Manx Radio news story about a forthcoming financial soiree:

https://www.manxradio.com/…/international-tax-conference-t…/

I wonder will there be any shock horror revelations at this event or will it simply be one of those back slapping exercises where Manx Radio’s John Moss can run around breathlessly interviewing the financial service glitterati about all that's good and pure in our tiny ‘haven’ while Paul Moulton at MTTV tries to elbow him out of the picture.

It wasn't always so. Back in the good old days when folk were poor but honest we carried this report on a financial shindig:

“In October of 1995 the head of the Island's fraud squad, Det. Insp. Geoff Allen confirmed that money from criminal sources had infiltrated the Manx financial system. Speaking at a conference on money laundering held on the Isle of Man in October of 1995 he confirmed that illegal funds from both Europe and Latin America had passed through the Island. Meanwhile the head of the Island's FSC, Jim Noakes, was quoted as saying at the same conference, "Criminal business is already embedded in the financial system and some of us may already be working for criminals without knowing it. It's our problem - if we claim to be an international centre we are involved.

"These honest and frank admissions were swiftly swiftly buried by the finance sector PR machine and the Manx government. However, nothing has changed and in the current Annual Report on the Manx Police in the section on Financial Crime buried on pages 49/50 of the sixty page document, the same Police Officer is cited bemoaning the lack of even a temporary Clerk to handle the growing workload of the section. He also confirms that the section has had no changes in personnel over the past year. The Manx government, like others globally, does not seem to have the inclination or will to devote sufficient resources to policing its financial services. The regulators and policemen themselves admit the sector is targeted by criminals. Gangs from as far afield as Moscow and Columbia are reported to have used the Manx financial centre” (Source Celtic League News archive May 1996)

Of course these days we have ‘Financial Intelligence Units’ and ‘Financial Crime Units’ brimming with the flotsam and jetsam thats has escaped from ‘Tweetbeat’. But somehow some of the good old honesty and...what's that word…’transparency’ seems to have gone.

Once we were ‘poor but honest’ now some of us are just poor...anyway enjoy the canapes!

Bernard Moffatt

Celtic League