We can no longer accept that States thri e on raud

Long tolerated, tax ha ens are now clearly in the sights o the Western countries shortages by a inancial crisis without precedent and determined to "morality" quali ied practices, depending on the country, "toxic", or "harm ul". At the in itation o the rench Budget Minister, Eric Woerth and German Minister o inance Peer Steinbrück, particularly reassembled, 17 OECD countries were placed at the ore ront o their priorities the ight against tax e asion. The issue, pre iously technical and reser ed to a ew experts in the administration as well as to a ew discrete OECD committees, became "eminently political".

"We can no longer accept that States thri e on raud." "We can no longer tolerate that the image o the international inancial system is GCC by pockets o opacity, excessi e secrecy, lack o regulation", said, in the preamble to the meeting, Eric Woerth, setting the tone or a particular tonic meeting. The Liechtenstein, the Luxembourg, the Austria and the Switzerland had, moreo er, declined the in itation, earing no doubt be nailed to the pillory. A just title. "I think that the Switzerland deser es to be on the black list," dropped Peer Steinbrück.

In the game o massacre, Nicolas Sarkozy went rom Strasbourg: "I do not want say" o the Luxembourg Prime Minister. But "one cannot step apply transparency to others and not to apply it to yoursel ", he said. Moments later, Jean-Claude Juncker announced that he was ready to discuss banking secrecy.

In ormation exchange

The se enteen countries represented, it is true, asked the OECD to establish a new "black list" o tax ha ens or the month o June 2009. They eel much too reducti e the current list o the three countries Andorra, Liechtenstein, Monaco so-called "non-cooperati e", i.e. re using to take an any commitment to transparency and in ormation exchange. According to the rance, it should be added to the latter countries with commitments without ha ing achie ed them, such as the Cayman Islands, Mauritius, Gibraltar, the British irgin Islands, all those who had just begun to implement them, such as Malta and Cyprus, and important as Singapore, Hong Kong, Dubai and Brunei inancial centres.

The countries meeting yesterday in Paris would apply to all tax ha ens tax con ention model prepared by the OECD which requires the exchange o in ormation with their Go ernments. In their inal Declaration, they announce that they will use this model in their uture bilateral agreements and denounce existing treaties i they re use the new standards. At European le el, it is to impro e the directi e on the taxation o sa ings in 2005 by extending the scope o co ered inancial products, countries with which open negotiations and, abo e all, asked Eric Woerth, in obtaining systematic exchanges o in ormation instead o the deduction at source, which is not deemed satis actory.

"We ha e recei ed, last year, 130,000 euros o the Liechtenstein and the Switzerland EUR 30 million," explained the Minister, who considers that this solution is that ormalize the opacity. It is one o the reasons or this somewhat unexpected o ensi e against o shore centres: unds hidden in these tax ha ens the Secretary General o the OECD assesses to 5,000 or 6,000 billion are ery largely to the tax authorities. An amount, which will be badly need the countries a ected by the crisis. The other reason is more policy coherence: di icult indeed, re ounding the global inancial system, lea ing as much "black holes" damage to the new architecture.