An Australian lawyer, Mr Simon Mitchell, on Tuesday January 28,  took his oath of allegiance before Chief Justice Vivekanand Alleear, becoming the first foreigner to be admitted as a Seychelles lawyer.

The office of the Registrar of the Supreme Court explained to Nation that the Legal Practitioners' Act provided for the Chief Justice to selectively admit foreigners to practice locally.

"The restriction is aimed protecting local attorneys from undue competition," a legal officer told Nation on Tuesday January 28, noting that Mr Mitchell would be confined to providing legal services in the area of offshore and international business matters.

"I will not be dealing with crime or divorce cases," Mr Mitchell mused, during a telephone conversation with this newspaper.

An Australian national, Mr Mitchell has lived in Seychelles for three years and has extensive experience in international corporate and commercial law. He is the managing director of Mayfair Trust Group (www.mayfair-offshore.com), which is a Seychelles-based provider of offshore corporate and trustee services.

Mr Mitchell is actively involved in offshore industry development activities and in promoting Seychelles abroad as an emerging offshore financial centre. He is an industry representative on the Corporate Services Sub-Committee, a technical committee which makes recommendations to Government on offshore industry development, including as to new products, laws and policies. Mr Mitchell is also Seychelles bureau correspondent for “Offshore Investment” magazine, a leading journal in the offshore financial services market.

He told Nation on Tuesday January 28, that "the Seychelles offshore industry has made solid progress over the last three years, with the International Business Company (IBC) being the star performer. I believe that a proposed new low-tax company will add impetus to industry growth. To move forward though, Seychelles still needs to attract several reputable offshore banks and more offshore service providers, so as to improve know-how and increase Seychelles' profile abroad as an offshore financial centre."

He said Seychelles would also benefit from better integration of offshore and domestic fiscal policy.

"The offshore industry has the potential to bring many benefits to Seychelles, including local employment, use of local support services and increased forex deposits and investment flows. It is encouraging to see the prevailing very high level of Seychellois involvement in the growing offshore industry,” he said.

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