Wake up and smell the coffee

David Cameron will be hosting an international tax and anti-corruption summit in London on 12 May. Sadly, "Most anti-corruption Summits have failed in the past because the governments that turn up do not want them to work." For example:

At the G8 in 2013, David Cameron pledged to make tax dodgers ‘wake up and smell the coffee’ and Oxfam welcomes the fact that the UK is about to introduce a public register of company owners - which will help crack down on the use of shell companies to avoid tax. But three years after the Overseas Territories and Crown Dependencies committed to look at introducing public registries of the beneficial owners of shell companies in their jurisdictions, so far only one Overseas Territory, Montserrat, has taken action.

Is that Panamanian coffee I can smell, Prime Minister? Or did you get one of your staff to collect a take-out from Starbucks?

Sarcasm aside, it would "be reasonable to say that benefitting from an offshore trust may influence Cameron’s view on whether such trusts should be tightly regulated or not." But we're all sure you'll be on it and closing down those loopholes before you can say "conflict of interest."

We're waiting...

...and waiting...