RAISE COUNTRY RISK FOR THE BAHAMAS

If you have been reading the so-called Bahamas Leaks a/k/a the Bahama Papers, you know that the ICIJ has released 1.3m documents, taken from Bahamian public records, involving 175,000 corporations formed there. While we knew, from the Panama Papers, that the Bahamas were one of Mossack Fonseca's preferred offshore jurisdictions, the Bahamas Leaks have now confirmed that the longtime promises, made by the Government of the Bahama Islands, that it had cleaned up its offshore act, had no basis in fact, and that the Bahamas were just as bad as the British Virgin Islands, and the Republic of Panama, in the tax haven "ask me no questions, I will tell you no lies," category of willful blindness jurisdictions, engaged in major money laundering, tax evasion facilitation, and concealment of beneficial ownership.

The Bahamas Leaks demonstrated that corrupt government officials, convicted career criminals, money launderers, and narcotics traffickers, still move their criminal proceeds into, and through the Bahamas. All the AML/CFT material, posted online by the Compliance Commission of the Bahamas, the Ministry of Financial Services, and the Central Bank of the Bahamas, and designed to assure compliance officers that the country is serious about anti-money laundering, are not being followed by the country's financial institutions, non-bank financial institutions (NBFIs), corporate service firms, and attorneys.

Raise Country Risk on the commonwealth of the Bahamas. Kindly disregard the motto; unfortunately, the pirates have not yet been expelled; they are the damn commerce.