Now, with the New Zealander’s legal work almost complete, the sultanate is open for business.
The sultan, who is worth an estimated $25 billion, selected Miller, 62, for his record on similar assignments for tax-friendly places like Bermuda and Malaysia’s Labuan, an island not far from Brunei. Miller was put in charge of the Brunei International Finance Centre, a unit of the Finance Ministry whose brief is to create this haven. The affable attorney wrote ten major pieces of legislation installing the proper legal framework. “The legal infrastructure is the most important piece of the puzzle,” explains Miller. “Here in Brunei we have put much of that in place in less than two years.”
By establishing Brunei as a major regional financial center, the sultan hopes to diversify the country’s economy beyond oil and natural gas. As a pro-Western Islamic nation run by a worldly leader, Brunei holds substantial attraction for moderate, wealthy Muslims and global financial institutions eager to serve them. The need for such a center has become more pressing since some Islamic funds were frozen in the West last year, leaving Muslims looking for a familiar place to keep their money -- and their values -- safe.
“Our aim is to become a more relaxed Singapore, with a touch of Bahrain,” says Miller, whose BIFC has begun actively soliciting clients in the past few months.
That mix seems to have some appeal. In August, Royal Bank of Canada opened a Brunei office, and in early October the International Brunei Exchange -- a bourse that offers, among other things, ways to play Nasdaq stocks -- went live. “When I came here and we started on this, everybody was skeptical,” says Miller. “Slowly but surely, we are proving our critics wrong.”
