From Asia's palm oil giants to a tiny British tax haven ... the hidden trail of vast profits

There is a street market selling Caribbean trinkets to cruise-liner passengers, a harbour full of super-yachts, a small park with chickens running around and several banks with long queues inside them.

But apart from a few middle-aged white men in expensive suits walking purposefully around Road Town, and nameplates showing that the world's biggest accountancy firms have offices here, there's barely anything in this small Caribbean capital to suggest that the British Virgin Islands is the world centre of offshore financial secrecy, corporate ownership, trust funds, paper companies and complex structures designed to avoid and possibly evade national financial regulation.