The Queen's PR firm, Farrer & Co, do not like journalists asking about possible money-laundering on one of the Queen's tax shelters.
In addition, Jersey hosts a branch of Coutts Crown Dependencies, the global offshore wealth manager that is private banker to the queen. Prominently, the queen herself was exposed by the Paradise Papers, as the leaked records showed her partaking of her far-flung offshore empire as Duchy of Lancaster. The monarch’s representatives were forced to admit for the first time in 2017 that she not only was investing in offshore financial vehicles but was well aware of it.
One of the toughest things about addressing the problems of the island is that it’s run by a confoundingly absent queen. “I often look at how we’re governing Jersey and say, ‘This is crazy,’” (say Higgins who was elected to Jersey parliament in 2008)There are things going on here that we don’t understand and can’t control. After 12 years in parliament, there are times I still don’t really know who’s running this island.”
Several years ago, Christensen, head of London’s Tax Justice Network, sat down and wrote a letter to the queen, exhorting her to take a stronger role within her sprawling constellation of tax shelters, crown dependencies, overseas territories, and secrecy jurisdictions, which, he noted, are among the most powerful on the planet. He was blunt, if dreadfully polite.
“I urge you,” he wrote, “as head of state of all these territories, to exert all possible influence to address one of the most harmful faultlines in the global economy.”
Extraordinarily, the queen, through a senior correspondence officer, wrote back. “The queen’s position as a constitutional sovereign precludes her from intervening in matters such as this,” the letter stated. “Thank you for taking the time and trouble to write as you did.”
Christensen was not impressed. “These places are undermining the global economy, so she cannot wash her hands of this role as monarch of all these tax shelters and head of state,” he says.
It doesn’t help, he adds, that she’s also directly reaping the benefits of her tax shelters.
“When the head of state is doing nothing and has offshore structures hiding her own money from tax, it does not pass the smell test,” he says. “A fish rots from the head.”
The queen does not involve herself in our constitution so what is she there for as a HoS pointless.
