A charm offensive in Europe is to be launched by Finance Minster Bob Richards.

He is to make a whistle-stop tour of Brussels, the home of the EU, Paris and London to reinforce the Island’s status as a reputable jurisdiction.

Mr Richards said he would be attending a conference in the Belgian city organised by the Association of Bermuda Insurers and Reinsurers before visiting the British and French capitals to hammer home the message that the Island is not a tax haven.

“The Ministry of Finance, because of the nature of what we do, is very heavily involved with Her Majesty’s Government and a lot of pressure and threats to the Bermuda economy come from Britain,” he said.

“To sign any international agreements we have to have the UK’s blessing, so we keep in touch. Most of what Bermuda does is on the economic front, so we try to keep in regular contact with UK officials.”

And he said he would be meeting French government officials in Paris to in a bid to make them more familiar with the kind of business done in Bermuda.

“We make assumptions that people know what we do and we assume people understand what we stand for — but we found when we became Government that people are making assumptions which just aren’t true.

“Even in the UK there didn’t seem to be a deep understanding of what Bermuda does — I’m not talking about government, but the general population.

“There seems to be a tendency to see us as dots on the map and a place for shady deals. It’s just not true.”

Mr Richards added: “We have discovered, as a Government, that we have to continuously be proactive in our approach overseas in protecting the Bermuda brand.”

He said that countries and multinational organisations like the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) were increasingly placing countries like Bermuda under the microscope as they struggle to recover from the global recession.

“The world as it is now is looking for easy scapegoats and we have been scapegoated a couple of times since we have been in Government. The only way to lessen this is to have a proactive approach and telling the Bermuda story to people who count.”

Mr Richards said Bermuda had briefly been put on a blacklist by the French government last year, but that the threat had been lifted after “frantic action” on the part of Bermuda.

He added: “It’s a hostile world out there — the OECD countries are searching around for revenue and dots on the map are easy targets.”

Mr Richards added that US TV host Bill Maher’s description of Bermuda as “a tax loophole masquerading as a country” was an example of the kind of attacks the Island faced.

He said: “We have people in the United States like we have people in London, and our industry has people in the US who again will tell our story.

“We have a good relationship with the United States government and we are going to keep it that way. We really have to push back when people make unwarranted attacks on our brand.”

Mr Richards added that Bermuda’s insurance and reinsurance industry had put millions into US natural disasters like Hurricane Katrina, which devastated New Orleans, and terrorist attacks like the 9/11 destruction of the World Trade Center in New York.

“When they are in need, we have delivered and that’s really the message for any detractors of Bermuda. We fulfil a critical role in enabling the world economy by covering risks other people either won’t or can’t cover,” he said.