Support for privacy, not secrecy
A RULING from a European court in favour of individuals fighting for corporate privacy, which has swum against the campaigner tide of ‘transparency’, could be very good news for Guernsey.
The individuals appealed to the Luxembourg registry for their names to be kept private, and the Court of Justice of the European Union backed the case.
Local reaction has been low key, but privately the industry will be delighted at the news and the benefit for the island’s finance industry.
But although Guernsey has often said the right thing with regard to beneficial ownership, the commitments made are heavily caveated, and now, it would appear, given the recent ruling, that there is no way back for public registers.
In 2019 the Crown Dependencies jointly announced an action plan to move towards a public register – or, as they jointly outlined, ‘developing international standards of accessibility and transparency’ – which was a commitment to public registers ‘when they become an international norm’. That now seems further away than ever.
Why is Guernsey against the concept? The island’s private register is better kept than the UK’s public register, with a legal duty to update details, but the island argues that public scrutiny is irrelevant to the effectiveness of a register, and undermines normal standards of personal affairs in a way as unreasonable, as it is ineffective.