Empowering the ordinary citizen to expose corruption. A Report on the work of the International Consortium of Investigative Journalism (ICIJ).Bermuda is a pre-eminent international offshore finance centre with global commerce operations and a high-class reputation for integrity, transparency and globally compliant tax, financial, and legal governance. Nevertheless, We, in Bermuda, can never rest on our laurels. We must continue to vigorously defend our island's hard-earned reputation whenever and wherever it is threatened.On a global scale, corruption is more pervasive than ever. Just one corruption scandal action can cast a significant taint on our jurisdiction's reputation.Transparency International, the Global Coalition Against Corruption http://www.transparency.org/ stated in their recent report, The Global Corruption Barometer Index 2013 compiled by interviewing 114,000 people in 107 countries, that “every day all over the world ordinary people bear the cost of corruption”. Among the key findings were:l Governments are not doing enough to hold the corrupt to account;l Bribery (corruption) is widespread;l The democratic pillars of societies are viewed as the most corrupt;l Personal connections are seen as corrupting the public administrations;l More than one in two people think that their government is largely or entirely run by groups acting in their own interest.Most significantly, ordinary citizens have reached the saturation point. Nearly nine in ten said they would act against corruption by speaking up or reporting an incident of corruption.In May of 2013, the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) website stated that they had “released to the global public, the largest data cache to date (2.5 million files containing secret financial records of 120,000 offshore companies and trusts) exposing hidden dealings of politicians, con men and the mega-rich the world over”.Entitled 'Secrecy for Sale: Inside the Global Offshore Money Maze', ICIJ http://www.icij.org/offshore/secret-files-expose-offshores-global-impact further stated that “the records include American doctors and dentists and middle-class Greek villagers as well as families and associates of long-time despots, Wall Street swindlers, Eastern European and Indonesian billionaires, Russian corporate executives, international arms dealers and a sham-director-fronted company that the European Union has labeled as a cog in Iran's nuclear-development programme.“The leaked files provide facts and figures — cash transfers, incorporation dates, links between companies and individuals — that illustrate how offshore financial secrecy has spread aggressively around the globe, allowing the wealthy and the well-connected to dodge taxes and fueling corruption and economic woes in rich and poor nations alike.”Where did this information come from? It was leaked anonymously from the records of two offshore firms, Singapore's Portcullis TrustNet and British Virgin Island's Commonwealth Trust Limited and then compiled over 15 months by the collaborative effort of 86 ICIJ journalists mostly. Is there more forthcoming? Yes, the first tranche comprised only a small portion of the records leaked that in some cases date back 30 years.The revelations have been astonishing. The ICIJ site cautions that many of these accounts are legitimate with transparent business purposes. However, the list of those that appear “not so healthy” is long and growing. The public recognition of the secret information has already caused a global firestorm of national embarrassment among highly placed executives, professionals, and political figures in various country governments and financial institutions.Among just a few owners of some of these secret accounts listed are: a top European banker from Austria, H Stepic, who resigned: Swedish tycoon, Hans Thulin; the Finnish State-Owned postal company; directors of Paraguay's largest bank; son of a leading Pakistani politician; French President Francois Hollande's campaign treasurer, JJ Augier; Ferdinand Marcos' daughter; and Canada's class action king, atty T Marchant, the spouse of a prominent Canadian senator.Visit the site here. http://www.icij.org/offshore/secret-files-expose-offshores-global-impact.It is very important to note that not all offshore transactions are in any way secret, spurious, or illegitimate. Millions of authentic transparent critical business transactions are conducted every day between jurisdictions across the globe. The ICIJ website carefully includes a caveat that” there are perfectly legitimate legal transactions (among these files cautioning that incorrect conclusions should not be drawn) but that the secrecy and lax oversight offered by (some of author's words) the offshore world allows fraud, tax dodging and political corruption to thrive.”Encouraging public involvement, a couple of weeks later, ICIJ announced that they had developed a user-friendly free accessible database of names, companies, and links to the accounts they had vetted thus far. Any one in the general public from anywhere in the world, without a password, or having to submit payment, could peruse The Offshore Leaks Database to search for individuals, companies, or trusts that they may know or think may have subverted ethical, political or financial standards.In a matter of hours, the site(http://offshoreleaks.icij.org/) had more than two million hits. It appears that the Global Index Corruption Survey was prophetic. The public has a right to know and the public decided to take action.The ICIJ Offshore Database Leaks release also placed, shall I say, a prod under, or more appropriately, galvanised governments around the world to get their acts together, to work in concert to increase transparency and stop corruption.Who is the ICIJ? Quite possibly little known to most residents in Bermuda, ICIJ is comprised of more than 160 reporters in over 60 countries who collaborate in an active global network to investigate, then report on cross-border crime, corruption and the abuse of power. Originally conceived as a cross border watch-dog journalistic project of the United States Center for Public Integrity, the ICIJ has gathered the resources of some of the most significant names in investigative journalism.The Center for Public Integrity's mission statement to enhance democracy by revealing abuses of power, corruption and betrayal of trust by powerful public and private institutions, using the tools of investigative journalism encapsulates succinctly true journalists' commitment to reporting the truth. Yet, journalists that seek to “tell the real story” in accurate, fair, and unbiased reporting put their lives on the line every day: deprived of earning a living, families threatened, and in more cases than we realise, beaten, imprisoned, tortured, eliminated and killed (88 last year 2012).Corruption, money laundering, tax evasion, theft from the public purse, and political self-interest dealings, starts with small positions of influence all the way up to the highest levels of government and financial institutions. As Transparency International said so well “every day all over the world ordinary people bear the cost of corruption”.The risks are always there to a democratic transparent constitutional process, the right to individual liberties, and the absolute protection of the freedom of the press as the solid cornerstones of a successful economic society.Bermuda's reputation is sacrosanct. It represents our future to all our residents, visitors, foreign and domestic investors. We must protect our Island reputation: fiercely, vociferously, and continuously!Martha Harris Myron CPA PFS CFP(USA) JP is a Bermudian journalist and cross border financial planning specialist focused on offshore financial perspectives on the challenges for international citizens living, working and straddling the North Atlantic pond: United States, Canada, United Kingdom, Europe, and the island of Bermuda, the premier international finance centre. martha.myron@gmail.com www.marthamyron.comThe opinions expressed in this article are those of the author alone, and not The Royal Gazette. This article is intended for general educational purposes only and cannot be used for specific individual tax, investment, or retirement advice, nor can this article be relied upon for any personal financial planning purposes.