Caribbean tax havens want crime rules set through WTO
Friday, July 2, 2004
GENEVA, Switzerland: Eight tax havens,
including four from the Caribbean region, are calling for global money
laundering and terrorist finance rules to be set at the World Trade
Organization, where they are members, rather than imposed on them by rich
nations, according to a report by Bloomberg News.
Caribbean island nation Antigua and Barbuda is leading the countries, which
say they can't afford to implement international standards set by the
Financial Action Task Force. The Group of Seven industrial nations and
Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development created the FATF in 1989
to coordinate global measures to combat money laundering.
The Paris-based FATF estimates that money laundering involves as much as $1.5
trillion a year, or up to 5 percent of global gross domestic product. “We face
a double whammy -- we don't participate in drafting the rules so our concerns
are not taken on board, and to implement them is a costly exercise,'' John
Ashe, Antigua and Barbuda's ambassador to the WTO, said in an interview in
Geneva. “Once it can be shown that a regime is in place in a country,
standards shouldn't be injurious to an economy.''
The FATF's 40 recommendations were amended
last year with the backing of its regional groups and their members, including
nations in the Caribbean and Pacific, said Patrick Moulette, the task force's
executive secretary. “There is no reason to re-open the debate'' because the
standards are already global, he said. “It's
important to have a consistent response,'' Moulette said in a telephone
interview. “The main principles, like knowing your customer, reporting
suspicious transactions and making money-laundering a serious crime, these are
basic measures that should be taken by all countries in the world.''
The FATF revised its list of
“non-cooperative countries'' in February to comprise the Cook Islands,
Guatemala, Indonesia, Myanmar, Nauru, Nigeria and the Philippines.
“We don't object to the exercise and we're
not arguing that standards developed outside the OECD should create an
opportunity for money-laundering or financing terrorism,'' Antigua's Ashe
said. “But no one disputes that we didn't participate in drafting the rules.''
Papua New Guinea, the Solomon Islands,
Belize, the Maldives and St Kitts and Nevis are also part of the Antigua-led
group.
Back...
Most popular
articles: viewed, printed and e-mailed
Printable
version
| 
