What was once the BBC’s current affairs flagship is now a mere shadow of its former self, with standards of investigative rigour that leave a great deal to be desired.
That said, the Lloyds TSB employee who was secretly filmed for the programme appears to have made life all too easy for a reporting team that was clearly eager to reinforce all the usual preconceptions about offshore banking.
His sales pitch about the ease with which a person with £4 million to invest can do so without being troubled by EU tax rules will have done untold harm to the image not only of our finance industry but also the Island as a whole. So will his apparent disregard for elementary know-your-customer precautions which backfired on him so spectacularly.
Gallingly, the boost provided by the recent highly favourable International Monetary Fund report in our regulatory regime will have been undermined by the smug, self-satisfied performance that the banker delivered to the hidden camera.
Of course, if what was recorded can be regarded as typical rather than an exception to the way that our banks and other finance businesses carry out their trade, we have rather more to worry about than our image.
If attitudes apparently revealed on Monday evening are common, far too much of what our ardent critics say about us will be founded in fact – though as Senator Ozouf has said, there are many questions which have yet to be answered.
For example, only one side of the secretly filmed interview was broadcast. It is therefore possible that the millionaire posing as an investor could have been asking what avenues were open to an expat who would not face the same tax obligations as a UK resident.
But, notwithstanding the many doubts which surround Panorama’s methods and the thoroughness of its investigation, the claims, explicit and tacit, made during the prime-time broadcast must now be fully examined here at home.
Senator Ozouf has said that Lloyds TSB and the Jersey Financial Services Commission, our watchdog against all sorts of financial sharp practice and illegality, will be taking steps to find out exactly what happened and in precisely what context.
And the JFSC’s director general, John Harris, who has said that the relevant episode of Panorama ‘was not the BBC’s finest hour’, has promised a full inquiry. Friends and foes of Jersey and its principal industry will be similarly eager to discover what emerges and to see what sanctions are imposed on anyone, broadcaster or unwitting protagonist, who has sullied the Island’s good name.
