The Tribune

By NEIL HARTNELL

Tribune Business Editor

nhartnell@tribunemedia.net

A Bahamian financial services practitioner has warned that episodes such as Baha Mar’s bankruptcy collapse and the Peter Nygard/Louis Bacon controversy must be avoided if the industry is to prosper.

Noting that perception is everything, Paul Moss told Tribune Business that he had been asked about Baha Mar “every single time” he travelled abroad to seek financial services business and promote the jurisdiction.

The Dominion Management Services president said: “The thing that really stops the industry from growing is the kind of headlines we’ve seen just recently, like the Peter Nygard incident, which implies corruption at the highest levels, and when we see headlines around the world about the commandeering of Baha Mar’s assets.”

Baha Mar’s former developer, Sarkis Izmirlian, and his team previously suggested that the Government’s winding-up petition against the project was akin to nationalisation - a charge that seems to have stuck internationally.

“When people like myself travel, we have to answer questions about Baha Mar,” Mr Moss told Tribune Business. “It comes up every single time. People are concerned their investments may not be safe.

“If that’s their perception, that’s as good as reality. We need to avoid these kind of headlines.”

Mr Moss last week said the Prime Minister’s call for the Bar Association to ‘open up’ to specialised foreign attorneys is 20-30 years past its sell-by date, as technology had made such a proposal obsolete by allowing practitioners to conduct business in the Bahamas from anywhere in the world.

He reiterated his argument that there was no sole panacea, or ‘quick fix’, for the Bahamas’ desire to achieve greater financial services growth.

Instead, Mr Moss called for the infrastructure supporting to the sector to be upgraded and made more efficient.

“When the Prime Minister throws up his hands and says they believe they’ve done all they can, and that all that’s left is to open up the Bar and we will grow, there’s no data to support that,” he added.

“To suggest that opening up the Bar will grow financial services, it’s tantamount to giving up.”

Mr Moss said the Bahamas needed a dedicated commercial court to give investors confidence that disputes would be heard and resolved in a timely manner.

“It’s no good to go to court today and be told that the matter will not come up until 2017 or 2018,” he added. “That doesn’t give people wanting to come to this jurisdiction confidence.”

Returning to his argument that the Bahamas needed to implement some form of income or corporate income tax, so it could be eligible to enter ‘double taxation treaties’, Mr Moss said this nation needed to shed its perception as an ‘offshore centre’ or ‘tax haven’.

“Even Brazil, where we have been up and down and all around promoting, still applies extra scrutiny to all transactions with the Bahamas because we are still known as an offshore centre and tax haven,” Mr Moss told Tribune Business.

“We need to change our perception, change the tax regime and allow those companies who want to do business with the Bahamas to do so without the scrutiny of documents because it comes from a so-called tax haven country.”