Paul Beckett - Tax Havens and International Human Rights

Paul Beckett dares to link two themes that most will not associate: human rights and tax havens. This is long overdue. As he argues, we cannot appraise the cost of tax havens solely in monetary terms. Their opacity, which creates privileged access to capital and opportunity for some whilst denying it to others, is now a real issue in international human rights. His arguments are strong, and sometimes provocative, but what they do is add an essential dimension to the critical debate on the future of tax havens.

Professor Richard Murphy, City, University of London, and Director, Tax Research UK

The financial crisis of 2008 and the subsequent dawning of the age of austerity has given fresh life to the debate about tax avoidance and the use of tax havens. Paul Becketts book makes a valuable contribution to that debate. His fresh, rights-based analysis of the problems which tax havens cause, and the deleterious effects they can have on human rights, is a passionate call to arms.

Julian B. Knowles QC, Matrix Chambers, Grays Inn, UK

This scholarly book which amalgamates human rights and tax havens had to be written! Its originality, detailed and critical analysis, lucid style, comprehensive content of different legal systems and thoughtful and balanced recommendations stimulate the readers mind into new thinking. It introduces an international debate and makes for essential reading.

Professor Jo Carby-Hall, University of Hull, UK

This book sails in uncharted waters. It takes a human rights-based approach to tax havens, and is a detailed analysis of structures and the laws that generate and support these. It makes plain the unscrupulous or merely indifferent ways in which, using tax havens, businesses and individuals systematically under mine and for all practical purposes eliminate access to remedies under inter national human rights law. It exposes as abusive of human rights a complex structural web of trusts, companies, partnerships, foundations, nominees and fiduciaries; secrecy, immunity and smoke screens. It also lays bare the cynical manipulation by tax havens of traditional legal forms and conventions, and the creation of entities so bizarre and chimeric that they defy classification. Yet from the perspective of the tax havens themselves, these are entirely legitimate: the product of duly enacted domestic laws.

This book is not a work of investigative journalism in the style of the Pulitzer Prize-winning authors of The Panama Papers, exposing political or financial corruption, money laundering or the financing of terrorism. All those elements are present of course, but the focus is on international human rights and how tax havens do not merely facilitate but actively connive at their breach. The tax havens are compromising the international human rights legal continuum.

Paul Beckett currently practises as an Isle of Man advocate and English solicitor at MannBenham Advocates, Isle of Man. He has over thirty-five years experience as a lawyer, both within the international private banking and fiduciary services industries and in private practice. He is a member of the Solicitor Judges Division, Law Society of England and Wales; a member of the Chartered Institute of Arbitrators; and a member of the Society of Trust and Estate Practitioners. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society for the encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce. His academic work extends over five decades. He graduated from Worcester College, Oxford in 1978 with first class honours in jurisprudence, being awarded his Master of Arts in 1982. He is also a member of New College, Oxford and was awarded his Master of Studies in International Human Rights Law in 2014.

Human Rights and International Law
Series editor: Professor Surya P. Subedi, OBE, QC (Hon)

About the series editor
Professor Surya P. Subedi, OBE, QC (Hon) is Professor of International Law, University of Leeds, member of the Institut de Droit International and former UN Special Rapporteur for human rights in Cambodia.

This series will explore human right laws place within the international legal order, offering much-needed interdisciplinary and global perspectives on human rights increasingly central role in the development and implementation of international law and policy.

Human Rights and International Law is committed to providing critical and contextual accounts of human rights relationship with international law theory and practice. To achieve this, volumes in the series will take a thematic approach that focuses on major debates in the field, looking at how human rights impacts on areas as diverse and divisive as security, terrorism, climate change, refugee law, migration, bioethics, natural resources and international trade.

Exploring the interaction, interrelationship and potential conflicts between human rights and other branches of international law, books in the series will address both historical development and contemporary contexts, before outlining the most urgent questions facing scholars and policy makers today.

A full list of titles in this series is available at: www.routledge.com/Human-Rights-and-International-Law/book-series/HRIL

Business and Human Rights
History, Law and Policy: Bridging the Accountability Gap
Nadia Bernaz

The Emerging Law of Forced Displacement in Africa
Development and Implementation of the Kampala Convention on Internal Displacement
Allehone M. Abebe

Human Rights and Development in International Law
Tahmina Karimova

Human Rights and Charity Law
International Perspectives
Kerry OHalloran

Paul Beckett

First published 2018
by Routledge
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2018 Paul Beckett

The right of Paul Beckett to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.

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British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Names: Beckett, Paul, 1956-, author.
Title: Tax havens and international human rights / Paul Beckett.
Description: New York : Routledge, 2017. | Series: Human rights and international law | Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2017025609 | ISBN 978-1-138-66887-4 (hardback)
Subjects: LCSH: Tax havens. | Human rights.
Classification: LCC K4464.5 .B43 2017 | DDC 343.05/23dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017025609

ISBN: 978-1-138-66887-4 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-1-315-61843-2 (ebk)