In These New Times

April 3, 2009 (LPAC)–(Paris) The triumphant announcement of Sarkozy saying that “the time of banking secrets is over,” was sharply ripped into pieces by the French judge Jean de Maillard, a specialist of financial crime in today’s Liberation.

De Maillard says one should contemplate the FBI’s famous saying “a woman cant be a little bit pregnant” when one deals with tax havens. Two attitudes are possible towards tax havens, a rhetorical one and a regulatory one. The G20 went for the first attitude. Instead of adopting the necessary means to outlaw them, or at least announce the objective of driving them out of business, the G20 only talks about sanctions against those that are “uncooperative.” “Undoubtedly,” says de Maillard, “that the state of Delaware or the City of London will never be considered as non-cooperative, while in reality the City is one of the most important and opaque financial markets of the world.”

Of course, anybody looking to the published list by the OECD of tax havens realizes something is wrong. Only four countries figure on the “black list” of “non cooperative entities”: Costa Rica, Malaysia, the Philippines and Uruguay. On the “grey list” of cooperative entities which still have to come up with real self-regulation one find a whole list of British dominions such as the notorious Cayman and Virgin Islands, Luxembourg or Monaco, but also real nations such as Chile, Austria or Belgium. On the white list, of course, real countries such as Italy, the US, France, China, Turkey, Russia and the empires crown jewels: the UK (London), Guernsey, Malta, Mauritius, Cyprus, Ireland or Barbados.