And the US rang the alarm on Belize and a whole bunch of Central American and Caribbean countries last week when they released the International Narcotics
Control Strategy Report. Belize and 10 other countries in the region were listed as countries of primary concern on the major money-laundering list.
Yesterday, the Prime Minister bristled at the report's conclusions:…
Rt. Hon. Dean Barrow, Prime Minister
"They say that, look as though this a demerit, this is a fault, government is encouraging the offshore sector, government in encouraging offshore
banking; well they pretty much killed off the offshore banking with their withdrawal of correspondence services but what the hell is wrong with
encouraging the offshore sector? You know these people after they do all sort of things to us, control commodity prices, and they tell you, you need to
diversify. When you try to diversify in terms of services in terms of something like the offshore jurisdictions with trust, no matter how much you
attempt to be squeaky clean, no matter legislatively try to set up all sort of; they just don't want you do to it. You go to the states and they tell
you about bear shares but you can set up companies in Wilmington, I'm afraid there is a level of hypocrisy that is very upsetting but they're the big
boys, they control and we just have to try our best. Ultimately they may well succeed in killing off the offshore sector as well but we are certainly
not going to say uncle and certainly not Uncle Sam."
The latest report was released last Wednesday.
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