Treasure Islands - Nicholas Shaxson [114]
And these attitudes fit seamlessly with another characteristic of small jurisdictions: collective inferiority complexes where residents see themselves as plucky defenders of local interests against the predations of big, bullying neighbors. From this worldview of mistrustful self-regard, it is but a short step to a libertarian, leave-us-alone worldview that sees any self-advancement at the expense of outsiders as valiant resistance against tyranny. This worldview, of course, dovetails closely with offshore’s ethical framework, which holds the rights of citizens and governments elsewhere to be inconsequential, which sees democracy as a “tyranny of the masses,” and holds the very idea of society with disregard, even contempt. Providing facilities for foreign tax evasion clearly fits this framework, as does a general hatred of tax.
This concentration of extremist attitudes in Jersey was self-reinforcing, as Christensen explains. “Most liberal people like myself left,” he said. My socially liberal friends from school, almost all of them left Jersey to go to university, and almost all of them didn’t go back. I can’t tell you how dark it felt. I have never been a depressed person but I went into a big one there. Everything I valued seemed of no significance. There was no one I felt I could turn to.”
He almost left but was persuaded to stay by an academic researcher who was putting together a new framework for understanding tax havens, and who persuaded him how important it was to understand the system from the inside. “I went under-cover not to dish the dirt on individuals and companies, but because I couldn’t understand it—and none of the academics I spoke to could either. There was no useful literature.” He did not even tell his brother what he was doing and kept this cover for 12 years. He grew roots: He became president of the Jersey Film Society, raced high-speed catamarans, and started a family. He never made a secret of his distaste for the system, but his lighthearted capers, such as founding the island’s first and only Jean-Claude Van Damme Appreciation Society, helped politicians to see him as a lightweight and therefore not a threat.
When he was appointed economic adviser in 1987, he began to feel the full force of what it means to stand out against an accepted, all-embracing consensus. Occasionally, he said, the pressure was so severe that he physically lost his voice. “Tension gets me around my neck. At times, in meetings . . . there were moments when I was literally choking with anger. It took real strength to stand up and say ‘I’m sorry, I don’t agree with this.’ I felt like the little boy farting in church: I felt so lonely during those committee meetings; nobody ever supported me.”
Many people who came to see him as economic adviser wanted him to join their Masonic lodge, and he frequently received the secret signal. “It was a finger twisted back on itself in a handshake,” he said. “These were mainly people I knew vaguely, who would come into my office: ‘Blah blah,’ general talk, then quite openly: ‘Are you interested in joining this lodge?’ I always said I would consider it, and I never did. The type of people doing this were bankers, senior merchants, and senior politicians. You don’t look at people’s hands: you feel a lump there when you shake. For me it felt slightly dirty—covert, as if we were all part of some dirty deal; a schoolboy thing.”
“Their thinking is very much of the Old Boy network—you are either one of us, or you are against us,” he continued. “It means they can trust you to do the right thing without having to be told—an insidious meaning of the word trust.” He was labeled untrustworthy and was frequently called “Not One of Us.” The media was captured. The dominant newspaper in Jersey was owned for many