The British Virgin Islands: Taking the high road

Offshore centres are being kept busy this year as the OECD and a whole raft of acronyms (EU, FATF, FSF, G7, IMF, UN) put them under the microscope.

The BVI is committed to addressing international concerns. We don't mean a few players' concerns about whether offshore centres should exist at

We mean the concerns about how offshore centres operate. In the BVI, we believe that reputations are slowly established but can be quickly lost. We believe it is in our interest as well as that of investors to be reputable and respectable and to regulate activities to internationally acceptable standards.

The BVI has a well-established track record of bilateral and regulator-to-regulator co-operation. Eleven separate pieces of legislation enable us to co-operate efficiently with information requests. Last year, we received what was generally regarded as one of the better reports in a Caribbean Financial Action Task Force mutual evaluation exercise into anti-money laundering measures.