MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Uruguay and Costa Rica figure as non-cooperative tax havens

The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development OECD has placed Costa Rica, Malaysia, the Philippines and Uruguay on its blacklist of non-cooperative tax havens, as part of efforts agreed at the G 20 London summit to crack down on tax evasion.

A separate “grey list” of countries that have agreed to improve transparency standards but have not yet signed the necessary international accords included Luxembourg, Switzerland, Austria, Belgium, Singapore and Chile as well as the Cayman Islands, Liechtenstein and Monaco.

China is on a third “white list” of jurisdictions that have substantially implemented the internationally agreed tax standards. But the OECD said China's two Special Administrative Regions of Hong Kong and Macao had so far only “committed to implement” the internationally agreed tax standard“.

In Montevideo the Uruguayan government anticipated an official release on the issue alleging it has collaborated “closely and intensely” with US authorities on money laundering and financial movements. Besides in Uruguay bank secret accounts are limited since “a court order is enough to have them lifted”.

The G 20 summit pledged to take action including sanctions against non-cooperative jurisdictions, including tax havens, using information from the OECD as its basis. The non-cooperative centres are accused of harbouring foreign tax avoiders who park billions of dollars out of reach of their home authorities.

”We have agreed that there will be an end to tax havens that do not transfer information upon request,“ said British Prime Minister Gordon Brown at the end of the G20 summit. ”The banking secrecy of the past must come to an end,“ he added.

”Recent developments reinforce the status of the OECD standard as the international benchmark and represent significant steps towards a level playing field,“ said OECD Secretary-General Angel Gurria in comments published on the OECD website.

”We now have an ambitious agenda, that the OECD is well placed to deliver on,“ he added. ”I am confident that we can turn these new commitments into concrete actions to strengthen the integrity and transparency of the financial system.”

According to the OECD Secretariat report on progress by financial centres around the world towards implementation of an internationally agreed standard on exchange of information for tax purposes has four main categories.

• Jurisdictions that have substantially implemented the internationally agreed tax standard.
• Tax havens that have committed to the internationally agreed tax standard but have not yet substantially implemented it.
• Other financial centres that have committed to the internationally agreed tax standard but have not yet substantially implemented it.
• Jurisdictions that have not committed to implement the internationally agreed tax standard.