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There is fierce competition between offshore financial centres with the effect that new instruments are being developed to keep at the forefront. Rather unorthodox solutions are sometimes offered. A good example is Law No. 25. This new juridical entity is structured as a Liechtenstein Foundation. Panama is a common law country where trusts are used for more or less the same purpose. So, why introduce an alien civil law structure?

A recent civil court ruling heralds a new perception of tax cases by the Swedish courts. The focus is shifted from the company owner to the tax adviser. This opens ways to improve the effectiveness of tax collection and also the prevention of irresponsible tax advising. The reputable accountancy firm Ernst & Young, with worldwide operations, is to pay damages of the equivalent of £1,600,000 to compensate for the effect of failed tax advice.

Focuses on offshore banking secrecy and how it affects the operation of anti‐money laundering endeavours like the Financial Action Task Force (FATF); it prevents onshore countries from knowing how offshore financial centre (OFC) jurisdictions control drug trafficking, terrorism and other serious crimes. Relates the author’s original research from 2002, aimed at finding ways to collect primary data behind the bank secrecy in the OFCs; this involved economic psychology and the grounded theory method. Presents a case study to show how OFCs perform a balancing act: they must adapt to the FATF requirements on anti‐money laundering legislation in order to avoid the Non‐Cooperative Countries and Territories (NCCT) blacklist, while maintaining a profitable financial sector. Reports a seminar organised by a prominent OFC in 1997, with speeches by the Prime Minister, Attorney‐General and leading bankers and lawyers.

Gone are the days when a bank could concentrate on providing a reliable service to its customer, and maintain that as part of that service it could guard the confidentiality of all information learnt in the course of the customer's banking. Formerly, a customer could be relatively confident that information about his or her business affairs would not be disclosed save in fairly limited circumstances, and the bank would not trouble itself as to how these affairs were conducted. Current legislation and regulation requires a bank to be aware of the commercial background to its clients' dealings and, in certain circumstances, to take steps to report criminal conduct or to account to third parties.

Enforcement of regulatory controls has traditionally been left to the criminal law. In the last 15 years there has been an increasing interest in using civil remedies for this purpose. Most of the attention has been on financial services, but there have been recent developments in the UK planning system, which provide interesting parallels.

Information is power — so it has been said — and nowhere has this statement been realised more significantly than in the banking industry. IT and banking in the 1990s and going forward to the next millennium are tightly bonded. It is now more difficult to determine whether business drives technology or the other way round. Given this scenario, one of the most important facets of managing IT in a bank is that of information security.

Section 2 of the Criminal Justice Act 1987 abrogates the right to silence since a suspect is required to answer questions in pre‐trial investigations by the SFO, although the answers are inadmissible as evidence unless proceedings are brought under s. 2(14) for giving false information or by s. 2(8), where the individual ‘makes a statement inconsistent with it’. In a previous article, the writer has considered the necessity and effectiveness of s. 2 powers. It is also instructive to analyse the conceptual basis of s. 2 powers since this will aid in the interpretation of statutory ambiguities and will allow the courts to have a uniformity of approach when seeking to resolve the statutory ambiguities. The conceptual basis is also important as concerns the resolution of where the line lies between the effective investigation of offences pursuant to s. 2 and the rights of the individual subject to such questioning. A critical examination of the above issues demands steering a careful course between normative rules and theory: in this area above all others it is impossible and undesirable to divorce one from the other.

The short answer is no. Notable examples of anti‐corruption laws are available. But there is probably no single example that one would elevate to a definitive universal model. This short briefing will focus first on the multilateral efforts of the Organization of the American States (OAS) against corruption and secondly, on the new anti money‐laundering legislation of the Bahamas with references to other major countries, as another perspective apart from the perspectives of other regions.

In most jurisdictions a suspect has the right to remain silent during criminal proceedings and he cannot be penalised for making false statements. This is loosely known as the ‘ban on self incrimination’ and is regarded as an important factor in due process protection of individuals subject to criminal proceedings. The right to silence applies only to the stage of criminal proceedings, and up to date it has surprisingly not been seriously debated. A criminal may have caused individuals and society major loss, damage or suffering; in principle one would expect that he would be obliged to assist in the clearing‐up of the case, particularly if this could ameliorate or repair the negative consequences of the crime. But this is not the way it is looked at. The suspect is under pressure, and must not be faced with the choice of lying or confessing.