The Caribbean Community (CARICOM) strongly objects to the recent labelling of some of its Member States by the European Union as Non-cooperative tax jurisdictions, CARICOM Secretary-General said Wednesday 12 December 2017.
He was at the time accrediting a new Ambassador of France to CARICOM, H.E. Antoine Joly at the CARICOM Secretariat in Georgetown, Guyana.
The Secretary-General urged France to leverage its influence for the EU to desist from “taking such arbitrary and punitive actions against,” those CARICOM Member States it had blacklisted. Those countries, he emphasized, have not been so labelled by the relevant regulatory authorities such as the Financial Action Task Force and the OECD Global Forum.
“This decision by the EU has been based on new and unilaterally-determined criteria, that go beyond the generally accepted international tax transparency and accountability standards which our countries have been diligently meeting over the past several years,” he stated.
“CARICOM strongly objects to this listing of our Member States and calls on the EU to remove our Member States from this pernicious list,” he added, noting that the Community stood ready to discuss this matter with the European Council.
A major consequence of “blacklisting” was the “de-risking” strategies that included the withdrawal of correspondent banking services by certain international banks, the CARICOM Secretary-General told the French envoy. He said that this action has had a “detrimental impact on the trade and financial operations” of the Region’s economies.
“As Ambassador to the Community, your direct engagement in promoting awareness about the extent of our capabilities and the obstacles we face in our aspirations for economic development is of great significance,” he told the new French envoy.
It is truly sad that the EU finance ministers can arbitrarily name and shame what they see as a group of 17 defenseless nations while the true tax havens — the Netherlands, Luxembourg, Ireland, and Bermuda — are not mentioned on the list. This is nothing more than the continuation of the evil work started by the OECD in 1998 when its Anti-Harmful Tax Competition Initiative caused every CARICOM country to bow down and surrender its tax and economic policy sovereignty to the dictates of the OECD. Subsequently, the Americans hit us with FATCA, and the OECD slammed us with the CRS. On December 5, the EU clobbered us with a blacklist. Enough is enough! Ambassador LaRocque is doing the right thing in asking the EU to cease and desist from this practice. But the truth is, we shall achieve nothing until we speak with one voice, act as one body, and stand up to the neo-colonialists in Brussels and Paris. The time has come.
Thank your PM and his politics for it. The EU and the US government are not as stupid as the Dominica electorate and allow Skerrit to throw sand in their eyes. Skerrit saddled the wrong horse some years back and since gone to bed with all kind of criminals… unfortunately Dominica has to foot the bill, that’s the way it is.
What is there to object?
Let us take heed stop the crying and do what we have to and stay off that list.
The caricom member states should stop having corupt people leading them and stop providing for corruption to occur in theses countries of caricom. That is the problem with the region the corrupt leaders that are in charge of these countries.
Only Hurricane Maria stopped Dominica from being on the news a EU blacklist. A reprieve is given to those countries affect by the Hurricane for a few months until such time if it can’t fulfil such obligatory requirement it too will be blacklisted.
The French aint going to listern to you all. You all so called Third and fourth world.. The French Government is corupt free..
Good. Such blacklists are nothing more than economic colonialism and should be strongly resisted accordingly.
Agree with you wholeheartedly Steve. Anything that developing economies, specifically the Caribbean States do that seems to be economically viable, here comes the European Union and the US to arbitrarily stifle or destroy the little hope. We must be forever subjugated by these neo colonialists and imperialistic monsters..
You all too funny.
Can DNO find out what countries are on the list?
DNO,
When the article came out two weeks ago, from Barbados, the Caricom Countries on the list were… Barbados,
Grenada, Saint Lucia, and Trinidad and Tobago.
Countries like Antigua, St. Kits and ou own Dominica are also on that list but the were given a respite
Till Feb.. 2018 because of hurricane damage. We must comply with the EU request by then if we are not to. be sanctioned with serious restrictions regarding international money movement. This is serious. We have quite a number of dubious off-shore banks in Dominica licensed by Skerrit. Even ou own Natinal Bank will find it far more difficult to operate internationally. We must not forget also that the EU is one of our biggest donors and we should not do anything to endanger that. I’m afraid ou leadership is making too much noise, and acting as if Dominica has an automatic entitlement without wanting to stick to the house rule. It are the ordinary citizens of Dominica, who will suffer most if the EU puts these restrictive measures into place.