MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Falklands and Gibraltar in Spanish List of tax havens and alleged money laundering

The List was published last Friday by the Official Spanish Gazette, and “will be submitted to review according to international legislation and the different national advances”.

The Falklands/Malvinas and Gibraltar figure among the latest list of countries and territories, which are considered tax havens by the Spanish Government, allegedly involved in money laundering operations, following on the latest international concept of non-cooperative jurisdiction in the matter.

According to the new concept, contemplated in the Spanish Bill to Fight Fraud, the list of tax havens including countries and territories, as well as the so called harmful fiscal regimes has 24 names, which is half what it was thirty years ago with 48.

The List published by the Moncloa Palace, seat of the Executive, includes Anguilla, Bahrain, Barbados, Bermudas, Dominica, Fiji, Gibraltar, Guam, Guernsey, Isle of Man, Cayman Islands, Falklands/Malvinas Islands, Marianne Islands Salomon Islands, Turks and Caicos Islands, British Virgin Islands, US Virgin Islands, Jersey, Palau, Samoa, US Samoa, Seychelles, Trinidad and Tobago and Vanuatu.

The List was published last Friday by the Official Spanish Gazette, and “will be submitted to review according to international legislation and the different national advances”.

Accordingly it also represents an update of criteria to determine the countries and territories that come under the non cooperative jurisdiction, in line with work developed in the framework of the European Union as well as OCDE, Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.

The Bill demands criteria of transparency and fiscal fairness, identifying those countries and territories characterized for facilitating the existence of extra territorial associations geared to the extraction of benefits without real economic activity or because of the existence of low or absence of taxing.

It also emphasized on opacity and lack of transparency, because of the non existence with the country involved of norms relative to tax information exchange with Spain or the results of the assessments from the Global Forum on the effectiveness of information exchange with those countries and territories.

Finally, “these criteria valued jointly are the ones that have allowed updating the list of countries and territories, according to Spanish Royal Decree 1080/1991/ The list originally published thirty years ago, initially had 48 territories, but that with time and specific agreements of information exchange, or to avoid double taxing has been reduced”.