"The financial sector here dreams of competing with Singapore or Hong Kong, but this place looks a lot more like a sleepy seaside village than a Far Eastern “dragon”. Labuan is “offshore” in more ways than one. There is oil here - lots of it - in the Brunei Gulf, the sultanate considered to be one of the world’s richest states. Labuan is also a member of the despised family of tax havens that the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) is trying to bridle. It all began in 2010, when the Malaysian government decided to attract capital from rich Muslim countries so that it could develop a sort of Islamic finance industry. But capital influx has given way to legal shelters and discretion."
No comments:
Post a Comment