Attorney-at-Law, Colin Riegels discusses the implications of public registers with Honestly Speaking's Claude Skelton-Cline. Photo: Team of Reporters

Eminent VI Attorney’s Gerard St C. Farara QC, at right and Colin Riegels. Photo: Provided

The imposition of a public registers for beneficial ownership was had by the UK Parliament, and ordered imposed on the Territory, despite the fact, the VI has its own legislature in the form of the House of Assembly (HoA) which is empowered to introduced laws in a democratic fashion.

These were among the notions discussed by eminent VI Attorneys, Gerard St C. Farara QC, and Colin Riegels.

The two were at the time guests of Claude O. Skelton-Cline’s, Honestly Speaking, on Tuesday August, 21, 2018, where the legal minds engaged the matter of the UK’s decision to impose public registers for beneficial ownership and its impact on the local Financial Services Sector.

Constitutional Review

Mr Riegels opined that whatever the ultimate decision on the public registers, by engaging in a legal fight with the UK on the matter, it opens the door for Constitutional review.

According to Mr Riegels, “even if we decide on the possibility of legal challenges, then obviously we are entering a period of either formal or informal constitutional review with the UK.”

The eminent VI Attorney-at-Law said, “I think one of the things that’s almost certain,” is the process will see, “some kind of dialogue, which says, hey we’re supposed to have a relationship here …We’re supposed to make our own laws…What gives you these rights to impose these laws upon us?”

He said, “any kind of sensible concessional accommodation that is made in terms of new constitutional arrangements going forward, has to call into question things like that which seeks to impose laws upon us without any democratic process here.”