Treasure Islands by Nicholas Shaxson, 2011, Excerpts
This network of offshore satellites does several things for the City of London. First, it gives it a global reach. These jurisdictions funnel money through to London. Second, the spiderweb lets the City get involved in business that might be forbidden in Britain, giving the financiers in London sufficient distance from wrongdoing to allow plausible deniability. By the time the money gets to London, it has been washed clean.
Offshore Magic Circle: Its members are made up of highly profitable multijurisdictional law firms mostly originating in Britain or its Overseas Territories and Crown Dependencies: a smartly dressed regiment of accountants, lawyers, and bankers forming a private global infrastructure that, in league with captured legislatures in the secrecy jurisdictions, makes the whole system work.
City ‘to be offshore currency market for China’
11 Jan 2012
Talking to bankers and lawyers, there is growing optimism that the City of London will join Hong Kong as an offshore center where the Chinese currency, the Renminbi, can be traded - and that an announcement on all this may not be far off. The RMB would be on its way to becoming a proper globally traded currency, commensurate with China's status as the world's second biggest economy.
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