I think you are trying to make something out of nothing.
The bottom line is that the information is all there and perfectly available.
If I want to know anything about a company I can find it. I know, because I did exactly that recently.
Also, I don't think it should be simple for people to access a persons data just because they are fucking nosey.
Whereas now it's like finding a needle in a haystack. And yet it allows the likes of Bell and Teare et al to say, as you did: "...the information is all there and perfectly available".
i think you are intentionally missing the point about this whole subject.
The Isle of Man is even more of a secrecy jurisdiction than it was 10 years ago. (But hey, it's just to stop nosey people)
Does anyone have a right to privacy any longer, or does everything have to be open and transparent to anyone who cares to look?
Article 8 of the Human Rights Act states that "Everyone has the right to respect for his private and family life, his home and his correspondence".
So if I'm in business and own shares in a legitimate company, why should anyone (other than tax and law enforcement) be able to look at what shares in that company I might own? What business is it of anyone else, any more than the balance of my bank account. It is no-one's business.
And privacy is not always about tax evasion. Is the King of Saudi Arabia really avoiding tax by using a BVI company?
Stretching the analogy, what if I am a business person in the fictional country of Volgaria and I have earned / saved a modest pension nest-egg, denominated in that safe and secure currency the British Pound, on which tax has been paid in Volgaria, and which is earning a nice rate of interest at the Bank of Volgaria. Now lets say that the Volgarian government decides to seize all British Pounds in the country and replace them with Volgarian Pesos at an exchange rate of its choosing. Or worse, I am accused of being a Bolshevik, profiteering from my hard working comrades by disloyally holding onto a foreign currency, and I am rounded up for compulsory re-education at a far away work camp.
So being aware of these risks, rather than invest my hard earned Pounds in the Bank of Volgaria, I set up a company in the sunny Virgin Islands and put my Pounds into a bank account in the Isle of Man. My retirement fund will be safe, I think. Until the day arrives that information on my Volgarian residency becomes freely available to anyone with an itchy nose, or the Volgarians and Manx governments enter into a tax information sharing agreement, or until information is leaked by those clever newspaper people, putting my business in Volgaria - perhaps even my life, at risk.
Far fetched? Couldn't happen? Perhaps not today, but look at your history and who knows about a few years hence by when our freedoms and privacy will have been eroded by successive governments, beyond redemption .
As Karellen states - this does happen. I know of people who work in potentially unstable countries who pay ALL their proper taxes in that country. The personal money they have left is banked here, via Corporate Service Providers - because they have genuine fears that the regime could find ways of stealing it from them. Genuine fears of doors being burst open at night, genuine fears of corrupt leaders being aware of their wealth and finding ways of putting it in their pockets. Some of these people are not multi millionaires, just people concerned that the corruption in their country could take away what they have saved.
