Ugland House Peeks Above the Parapet

Ugland House, the infamous Cayman Island building where 18,000 companies are “located”, was in the news again recently when President Obama mentioned it on May 4 during his announcement of a new anti-tax haven plan. Noting that “either this is the largest building in the world or the largest tax scam in the world” the President made no mystery about which he thought it was: he called it a “scam.”

Ugland House has a history of bad press. It was mentioned often during last year’s presidential campaign, has been the focus of Senate Finance Committee hearings and was highlighted in a Government Accountability Report last year. Despite it’s poor reputation its operators have chosen to engage in a debate on the “merits” of its operations.

In a letter to the New York Times yesterday Charles Jennings, a Managing Partner at Maples and Calder (the law firm that operates Ugland House), noted his disappointment that the benefits to the US economy were not mentioned in a news story that ran after the President’s announcement. Jennings said that,

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