‘A mockery’: how offshore tax havens are thwarting the UK’s transparency push

The Cayman Islands has quite a long, drawn-out process for requesting company records in its jurisdiction. Transparency campaigners say aspects of the system in the British Virgin Islands are even worse. Photograph: LOOK Die Bildagentur der Fotografen GmbH/Alamy

Since Britain’s offshore secrecy jurisdictions caved in to pressure from Westminster to embrace corporate transparency, finding out who owns a company in one of these island havens is, in theory at least, a piece of cake.

Take the Cayman Islands.