United Kingdom Anti-Corruption Champion Baroness Margaret Hodge has been urged not to shun the media during a high-profile visit to the Virgin Islands in the coming days.
Lady Hodge is being dispatched to the territory at a time of simmering tensions between London and the VI over financial transparency.
Overseas Territories Minister Stephen Doughty announced the move as a “factfinding” mission designed to inform future British policy.
After Mr. Doughty dodged the media during his own visit to the territory last November, former opposition leader Ronnie Skelton said this week that Lady Hodge should engage with the press during her trip.
Criticism of the VI
Even before being appointed anti-corruption champion last December, Lady Hodge was an outspoken critic of the VI’s financial sector, which she deems insufficiently transparent.
Contacted by the Beacon, Lady Hodge’s office gave no indication about whether she would agree to the Beacon’s repeated requests for an interview or hold a general press conference while in the territory. Her office would not confirm when she will arrive or the itinerary for her long-anticipated visit.
‘Time-constrained visit’
Though Mr. Skelton (R-at large) told the Beacon he thinks Ms. Hodge should engage with the media during her visit, members of the government took a different line.
“This is a time-constrained visit with a lot to fit in on a wide range of technical matters,” Financial Services and Economic Development Junior Minister Lorna Smith told the Beacon. “We will of course speak to you and the media after the visit, but while she is here we have to focus on spending that time working through the key matters at hand and ensuring she gets a good sense of who we are as a territory and a community.”
Premier Natalio “Sowande” Wheatley, who has said Lady Hodge should use the visit to “educate” herself about the VI, was non-committal about whether she should talk to the press.
“I don’t have a comment on that at this moment,” he told the Beacon.
Ms. Smith and Lady Hodge, who was then a Labour member of parliament, had a fiery exchange on BBC Radio Four’s flagship news programme “Today” in 2018 over fiscal openness in the VI.
Asked for details of Lady Hodge’s visit, which sources told the Beacon is scheduled for Monday through Wednesday of next week, a spokesperson for the anticorruption champion said information will be shared closer to the time.
‘Fact-finding visit’
Mr. Doughty announced the visit in a blunt statement to the House of Commons in July.
“I have asked Baroness Hodge to undertake a fact-finding visit to the British Virgin Islands and report back to me,” he said at the time. “I will consider further steps carefully in light of the findings.”
In August, Mr. Wheatley insisted that Lady Hodge would benefit from seeing the territory for herself.
“The primary purpose of her coming here is so that she can learn; so that she can be educated, in my view, in terms of what we are doing to fight against illicit finance,” he said at the time.
Mr. Wheatley also addressed Lady Hodge’s coming visit in a discussion about financial services broadcast on government’s Facebook page on Tuesday evening.
“We have been moving in the right direction as it pertains to balancing transparency and privacy,” he said.
Foot-dragging?
In calling for greater transparency in the VI, Lady Hodge has repeatedly accused the government of “dragging its feet” on expanding access to the territory’s beneficial ownership register.
Along with other senior British politicians, the anti-corruption champion has urged the VI to grant full public access to the register despite the government’s insistence on restricting access to people deemed to have a “legitimate interest” in viewing it.
Criticism by UK members of parliament increased over the summer after the VI missed its June target for launching the new register — which the premier says will now come into full operation early next year.
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