Date: August 17, 2006

Organiser: The seminar has been put together by ICS TRUST in collaboration with the Lion Rock Institute.

Event: Offshore Financial Centres - Saints or Sinners?

Topic: Group Discussion with Dr. Morriss

Synopsis

Offshore Financial Centres - Saints or Sinners?
 
Offshore financial centers are often regarded as "tax havens" or "palm tree islands", where illegitimate gains are stashed away from the eyes of the prying governments. In particular since Enron and the more shakening event on 9-11, many of these tax havens have been accused of faciliating money laundering and terrorist financing. Several blacklists also emerged, aiming to name and shame those offshore jurisidictions which lacked preventive measures for money-laundering. Over the past few years, offshore financial centers have been aggressive in tighten their anti-money laundering regulations and many went further to sign information exchange agreements with superpowers such as the U.S. However, investigations reveal that most of the criminal offences were infact orchestrated onshore. It has been suggested that perhaps offshore jurisdictions should start to blacklist high-risk onshore jurisdictions.
 
 
The group discussion was lead by Dr. Morriss with a brief oral presentation on the Cayman Islands followed by a group of 10 participants engaging in a discussion on developments in the offshore industry, the emerging jurisdictions and the jurisdictions which are gaining increasing popularity.
 
 

A.B. 1981 (Princeton), J.D., M.Pub.Aff. 1984 (Texas), Ph.D. 1994 (MIT)
Galen J. Roush Professor of Business Law
Regulation and Director of the Center for Business Law and Regulation
Case School of Law, Case Western Reserve University (Cleveland, USA)

Dr. Morriss, who had recently conducted research in Nevis and the Cayman Islands, is a world leading expert on the regulation and economics of offshore banking centres. He has recently been exploring the impact of regulatory competition and the assult on offshore banking centres by the OECD, EU, IRS and others.
 
Andrew P. Morriss is Galen J. Roush Professor of Business Law & Regulation and Director of the Center for Business Law & Regulation at Case Western Reserve University School of Law, Cleveland, OH. He is also a Research Fellow of the NYU Center for Labor and Employment Law, a Senior Fellow at the Property & Environment Research Center, Bozeman, Montana; a Senior Scholar at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University; and a regular visiting professor at Universidad Francisco Marroquín, in Guatemala.
 
He received his A.B. degree from Princeton University, his J.D. and a masters degree in public affairs from The University of Texas at Austin, and his Ph.D. (Economics) from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
 
He is the author or coauthor of more than forty book chapters and scholarly articles, including Signaling and Precedent in Federal District Court Opinions (with Michael Heise and Gregory Sisk) 13 SUPREME COURT ECONOMIC REVIEW 63-98 (2005); Defining What to Regulate: Silica & the Problem of Regulatory Categorization (with Susan E. Dudley), ADMINISTRATIVE LAW REVIEW (forthcoming 2006); and The Public-Private Security Partnership: Counterterrorism Considerations for Employers in a Post-9/11 World, in WORK PLACE PRIVACY HERE AND ABROAD: PROCEEDINGS OF THE NEW YORK UNIVERSITY 58TH ANNUAL CONFERENCE ON LABOR (Kluwer 2006). He is the co-editor of CROSS-BORDER HUMAN RESOURCES, LABOR AND EMPLOYMENT ISSUES: PROCEEDINGS OF THE NEW YORK UNIVERSITY 54TH ANNUAL CONFERENCE ON LABOR (Samuel Estreicher and Andrew Morriss, eds.) (Kluwer 2004); PROPERTY STORIES (editor, with Gerald Korngold) (Foundation Press, 2004); and THE COMMON LAW AND THE ENVIRONMENT (Roger Meiners and Andrew Morriss, eds.) (Rowman & Littlefield, 2000).
 
He shares his home in Ohio with his wife, two daughters, eight cats, one dog, and six horses.

 
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