Financial Transparency Coalition

On September 9th the Cayman Islands introduced a bill for the establishment of new Special Economic Zones. The most Alice-in-Wonderland part of the bill is this bit, on page 14:

"A special economic zone shall be deemed to be outside of the Islands and not in the Islands."

Emphasis added. So where will this zone be? It seems that it will, for the relevant purposes, effectively be 'elsewhere' - which, in practical terms, means 'nowhere.' This 'it's elsewhere, don't-blame-us, we-can't-regulate-this' approach is what a lot of the activity of secrecy jurisdictions is designed to do - it's not so common,...

George Osborne says that 'those who evade taxes, like benefit cheats, are leeches on society'. However, he has agreed a deal that rewards those who avoid paying taxes in the UK by hiding their money in Switzerland. George Osborne says: 'my message to those who try to hide their incomes from the Revenue in offshore bank accounts and false declarations is simple: we will find you and your money.' A senior official at the Indian Central Board of Direct Taxes says: 'money laundering or illegal commission are a criminal offence. So, our effort will be to not...

The UK has initialed an agreement with Switzerland which we recently wrote up on the Task Force blog. In short, UK tax evaders using banks in Switzerland will have to start paying some tax - but the UK will allow those (criminal) tax evaders to avoid penalties and retain their anonymity. The UK will have to trust that Switzerland will keep its part of the bargain, even though it will be impossible to conduct any comprehensive checks. There are reasonable fears that this model may spread widely to other countries. We at TJN think this is a thoroughly rotten and...

LONDON - The new tax deal between the UK and Switzerland amounts to collusion with criminality and will seriously damage poor countries’ attempts to collect the billions they lose to tax dodgers, Christian Aid is warning.