Offshore Britain created the Epstein class

The Cayman Islands are mentioned 1,301 times in the Epstein library. Bangladesh, the eighth most populous country on Earth, only gets 148 references.

They aren’t the only British Overseas Territory that’s over-represented in the documents released so far: Bermuda – population, 64,000, has 967 name checks in the documents. “BVI,” the British Virgin Islands, has 997. Nigeria, the world’s sixth most populous country, only appears 463 times.

This is a particularly British phenomenon. The Caribbean island of Curaçao, which is a Dutch territory, gets five references. Martinique and Guadeloupe – both of which are French – get 38 and 92, respectively. Anguilla – a British territory just a couple of islands away – appears 265 times.

And this isn’t only true of Britain’s Caribbean territories. Gibraltar has 254 mentions; “Isle of Man,” 116; “Guernsey,” has 240.

So far, coverage of the Epstein files in the UK has, quite rightly, focussed on the people who were complicit, the personal treachery of Peter Mandelson and Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, and the various implications which follow from that. But if we take a step back, then we can see this is part of a wider tale about our times, about how the inequality created by 50 years of neoliberalism drove the rise of an unaccountable global oligarch class, which has – as well as abusing women and girls for its own pleasure – funded the far right around the world, driving the shift to an emerging system of authoritarian capitalism.

Seen in that context, the Epstein files need to be looked at alongside three other tranches of paperwork: the Panama papers, the Paradise Papers and the Pandora papers. Each of these vast document leaks gave details of how the mega-rich were squirrelling money offshore to avoid tax, regulation or accountability. And, while most of the coverage from these also focussed on the hundreds of acts of individual wrongdoing they exposed, together, they told a wider story: most of the companies listed in the documents were registered in British territories – either the UK itself, or one of its Overseas Territory or Crown Dependency offshore financial centres. They formed a vast paper trail, leading back to Britain.

When British people think about these spaces, which we do rarely, we tend to treat them like wayward children – remnants of empire which we’ve allowed to do their own thing, as though it’s just bad luck that so many have got into laundering the proceeds of organised crime, protecting the wealth of kleptocrats and preserving the secrets of the hyper-wealthy. According to the official narrative, Whitehall is keen for them to clean up their act, but cautious about doing too much. A closer look at the history shows a different story: each of these spaces was turned into an offshore financial centre by the British colonial office, consultancy firms based in the UK, and banks in the City of London.

Likewise, they are made possible by Britain’s famously flexible constitution, which the then Cabinet Secretary, Robin Butler, once described as “something we make up as we go along”: Guadeloupe and Martinique are Overseas departments of France, with clear, written down rules shaping their relationship with metropolitan France. British Overseas Territories can enjoy the diplomatic and military protection of the British state, but set all of their own rules around tax, transparency, and the like in ways that aren’t really accountable to anyone.

As Gibraltar’s business secretary made clear to me when I interviewed him for my forthcoming book “Abolish Westminster,” (Faber and Faber, due November) the fact that these places have British status is absolutely vital in reassuring the hyper-wealthy that their money is safe when it’s stashed in them. The fact that, for example, the Privy Council is the final court of appeal, is a central part of their pitch to those looking for quiet corners to stash their often stolen cash.

The Epstein files tell us lots of important things about the world: this is a story about abusive men. It’s a story about the current White House, and Buckingham Palace, and Downing Street, about the Norwegian monarchy, and the tech bros and all the other men who are implicated.

But it’s also a story about how wealth and power were allowed to be centralised into a global elite, who behaved however they wanted, because they believed that they were entirely unaccountable. And, when you follow the money, and look at where it is these people stash theirs, how they protect their secrets and avoid accountability, again and again, Britain’s offshore spaces are a central part of their strategy.

*Adam Ramsay is a former editor, UK editor, and special correspondent of openDemocracy. He now writes the Abolish Westminster newsletter.

Source: https://abolishwestminster.substack.com/p/offshore-britain-created-the-epstein