Financial Transparency Coalition

LONDON - Significant international pressure from an increasing number of policy makers is steadily mounting against the secrecy offered by tax havens, says Christian Aid following the G20 in Cannes. While the Eurocrisis took centre stage at the summit, a series of important developments in the campaign for tax justice that emerged at the same time went largely unremarked.

WASHINGTON DC - As international financial turmoil intensifies, G20 leaders of the world’s largest economies meeting in Cannes produced a final document that offers some limited hope for international financial transparency and meaningful action on tax evasion and aggressive tax avoidance. “Governments around the globe are missing the funds necessary for promoting growth and combating poverty. But these funds haven’t vanished off the face of the Earth. They’ve simply been rerouted from public coffers to private pockets via aggressive tax dodging and grand corruption,” Raymond Baker, director of the Task Force on Financial Integrity and Economic Development commented today.

WASHINGTON, DC – Global Financial Integrity (GFI) praised the G20 today for its commitment to tackle the issue of illicit financial flows and crack down on tax haven secrecy. In the final declaration and its appendices published at the conclusion of a two-day summit in Cannes, the 20 largest economies committed to “deal effectively with tax havens and non cooperative jurisdictions including the fight against illicit capital flows considering their impact on development.”

In 2006 the Global Forum published a review of the legal and administrative frameworks in the areas of transparency and exchange of information for tax purposes covering 82 jurisdictions, entitled Tax Co-operation: Towards a Level Playing Field – 2006 Assessment by the Global Forum on Taxation. This publication was followed by four annual assessments, with the 2010 publication covering 93 jurisdictions. Following the restructuring of the Global Forum, a program of indepth peer reviews was launched in 2010. This 2011 Report on Progress publication describes the progress made since the Global Forum launched its peer review mechanism in 2010.