The Benefits of Being neither Fish nor Fowl: The UK Caribbean Overseas Territories in the International Community

• Author: Sir Ronald Sanders
• Pages: 87-97

87

- THE BENEFITS OF BEING NEITHER FISH NOR FOWL -

The Benefits of Being neither

Fish nor Fowl:

The UK Caribbean Overseas Territories in the

International Community

This chapter is concerned with the UK Caribbean Overseas

Territories (COTs) which have achieved varying measures of autonomy

over their domestic affairs while the British government retains control

of their external affairs and defence. These countries are neither fish

nor fowl in the international community. While they are not players

in their own right in global affairs, some of what they do, and what

they experience, does concern large countries in the wider international

community. And, these large countries sometimes act in ways that

constrain local decision-making even as local decision-makers are denied

the right to make representation for themselves.

Two cases in point are: the ‘Harmful Tax Competition Initiative’

(HTCI) of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and

Development (OECD) and the criteria for judging non-cooperative

jurisdictions in money laundering devised by the OECD’s sister

organisation, the Financial Action Task Force (FATF). Between 2000

and 2001, both of these bodies blacklisted a number of the COTs on

the basis of rules which they arbitrarily devised and unilaterally tried

to enforce. The ostensible objective of the HTCI was to guard against

resident persons and companies of OECD member states establishing

bank accounts and international business corporations in non-OECD

countries or jurisdictions to evade taxation.1 Eventually, a global forum

of OECD and non-OECD countries was formed and the HTCI

collapsed on the demand of the non-OECD jurisdictions for a level

playing field with some OECD countries such as Switzerland, which

had opposed it from the outset. Nevertheless, considerable pressure

was placed on the COTs to comply with the HTCI, particularly as a

SIR RONALD S ANDERS

5.