CIAO DATE: 12/2009
November 2009
Danish Institute for International Studies
Efforts to shed light on tax evasion practices are intensifying - and the focus is increasingly on some rather 'unusual suspects'. Earlier this week, an initiative was launched which measures the degree to which countries accommodate or combat various forms of 'financial secrecy': the Financial Secrecy Index (see box). Contrary to OECDs own official list of tax havens, the Top 10 countries accommodating financial secrecy, instead of combating it, are to large part the OECD-countries themselves (USA (Delaware), United Kingdom (London), Ireland, Luxembourg, Belgium, and Switzerland).
Resource link: Combating illicit financial flows from poor countries. Estimating the possible gains [PDF] - 3.5M