An extremely important condition for those who want to establish their business or private interests in an offshore financial center is to choose a country that provides both political and economic stability, without a record or potential of any crisis.
Any offshore jurisdiction worth considering must not be subject to violent political swings or the likelihood of military coup, civil disturbances, war or invasion. Here, a particularly bad example was the African state of Liberia, whose well intentioned offshore legislation was ruined by an ongoing civil war and political turmoil.
A similarly important factor is economic stability. The ideal offshore jurisdiction should have a transparent economic system, a sound economic policy, a stable currency with no exchange and investment repatriation controls, low inflation and the main economic liberties strongly supported by the law and the judiciary.
Quite often, the most positive results in both political and economic stability are achieved by those countries, who have retained certain dependency on their former colonial powers, like Gibraltar (formally part of the UK), British Virgin Islands (also a British Crown dependency), Hong Kong (formerly part of UK, now an administrative region of China), Netherlands Antilles. At the same time, many of the offshore tax havens are completely independent democracies, with proven, good track records – like, for example Seychelles or Singapore.