A lecturer at the Open University and a guest lecturer at Birkbeck College, University of London, Robert Herian holds a BA in American Studies from King’s College, London, and an LLM from Birkbeck College, London.
In this opinion piece, Herian discusses a recent high-profile British scandal and how blockchain could offer a solution to the ethical quandary it raises. Amid the outcry over British Prime Minister David Cameron’s tax affairs, his intervention in 2013 to block EU transparency rules regarding offshore trusts bears more scrutiny. It was decided that trusts should not be held to the same standards as companies when it came to making the end owners and beneficiaries publicly known.
But now the Panama Papers raise important questions as to whether trusts ought to be more open to public scrutiny. A major reason for this relates to fairness when it comes to paying taxes. However, blockchain may provide a solution to this problem, enabling trusts to be more transparent, while ensuring the security of their holdings, too.
Trusts are often highly complex legal arrangements; but they tend to work on the same fundamental basis. First conceived many hundreds of years ago, trusts provide a unique method of property management. This uniqueness relates to how wealth is used, and relies on the separation of beneficial ownership from the responsibilities of property management that come with holding legal title.
Trusts come in both public and private forms. But their history points to an intimate desire for individuals and families to be able to preserve their wealth and, importantly, pass it on to the next generation. Origin of trusts
One popular story of how trusts came into being involved the Crusaders of the 11th and 12th centuries who, before leaving to fight in the Middle East, arranged for their land to be […]
