TV Review: Britain’s Trillion Pound Island
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In BBC2’s new documentary Britain’s Trillion Pound Island: Inside Cayman, Jacques Peretti undertakes one of the first investigative reports into the secretive offshore tax haven that is the Cayman Islands, interviewing people from the most ordinary British citizens living there to the multinational corporations which make their home there for tax purposes.
From a financial perspective, this is certainly an interesting programme. In a somewhat roundabout route, Peretti takes the viewer through the mechanism of holding companies, offshore deals and tax havens which keep international corporations afloat. In entertainment terms, however, it is not quite so successful. The only pretence of actual investigative journalist going on is the occasional security guard telling the crew to turn the camera off, and Peretti has a slightly irritating, patronising voice-over manner which spoils it all somewhat. A brow-furrowing allegory involving stingrays just tops the whole thing off.
Interestingly, Peretti’s aim here seems to be to defend the Cayman Islands from their critics who condemn it as an elitist tax haven, rather than simply expose it as it is. Perhaps a more rigorous investigation is called for, since this one doesn’t contain a great deal of exposition at all.