Financial Transparency Coalition

Officials from 126 countries are meeting at the United Nations headquarters in New York for a three-day conference on reforming the global financial system.

TREASURY Minister Allan Bell was due today to signal a major shift in the Isle of Man's tax policy – with the aim of silencing the critics who accuse us of banking secrecy.

Last month the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development in Paris removed the last holdouts Andorra, Lichtenstein and Monaco from its blacklist of "uncooperative" tax havens. With every OECD-targeted tax haven across the globe now committed to tax "transparency and exchange of information," according to the organization's Committee on Fiscal Affairs, the world seems to have entered a new era.

At a meeting in Berlin on Tuesday, the OECD finance ministers agreed to step up the fight against tax evasion, focusing on countries such as Switzerland, Liechtenstein and Luxembourg.