The story of First International Bank of Grenada and several companies with which is has a close association is an object lesson in the art of illusion. And the shame is that the fallout will reflect on offshore centres worldwide. FIB (it doesn’t call itself that) will be on everyone’s lips when they look for another excuse to convince those who would invest overseas of the inadvisability of their chosen course of action. But the fact is that FIB and the company it keeps are shielded by a particular regime and there is cause for alarm at the lack of supervision.

The nett effect should be that Grenada should be blacklisted by the international finance community until it demonstrates a more responsible attitude to the financial services businesses it permits to be registered and trade from there.

WMLR readers would be well advised to take special care of any financial dealings involving Grandian operations. Why? The article “Anatomy of a Financial Services Scandal” explains all.

We consider the position of law firms under counter-money laundering laws, which have a wildly disparate level of responsibility depending on jurisdiction.

Finally, and this is nothing that pleases us, our journalistic colleagues at Anti-Fraud and Laundering Alert (ALFA) have shut up shop. We had no association with them, but we regret to see the closure of any outlet for information that raises the issues we are concerned with.