Strange as it may seem, given all the hype in the news recently, when I started to search on Google for the blacklist of non-co-operative tax havens and bank secrecy countries published recently by the OECD at the behest of the London G20 meeting, it was mighty hard to find the complete list! Even on the OECD site after visiting multiple pages, I found only a pdf file that by no means makes the blacklist clear.

I suppose I should not be surprised, however – for, as I wrote in my article G20 and OECD: Much Ado About Nothing this whole campaign is more about publicity, distractions and scare tactics than real action against tax havens. The list on the OECD site is obviously the result of a lot of political horsetrading – would you believe for example, after all the recent hype, that the OECD does not list Luxembourg and Switzerland as tax havens? And how on earth did Chile get on the list – did you ever hear anything about offshore banking in Chile? While Hong Kong, a major offshore financial hub,  escaped listing altogether, for fears of upsetting the Chinese.

Here, then, for the record is a complete list of non-cooperative tax havens as published by the OECD, for which I would like to thank the print edition of the Spanish newspaper El Pais dated April 4th, 2009. In fact, there are three lists: the blacklist (countries that ignore foreign fiscal authorities) a grey list (countries that supposedly lack fiscal transparency but have commited to change) and a third list, neither grey nor black, of countries that are “non-co-operative financial centres.”

THE BLACKLIST

Costa Rica, Philippines, Malaysia

THE GREY LIST (COUNTRIES THAT HAVE COMMITTED TO CHANGE)

Andorra, Anguilla, Antigua and Barbuda, Aruba, Bahamas, Bahrein, Belize, Bermuda, British Virgin Islands, Cayman Islands, Cook Islands, Cyprus, Dominica, Gibraltar, Grenada, Guernsey,  Isle of Man, Jersey, Liberia, Liechtenstein, Malta, Marshall Islands, Mauritius, Monaco, Monserrat, Nauru, Netherlands Antilles, Niue, Panama, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Saint Lucia, Saint Vincent and Grenadines, Samoa, San Marino, Seychelles, Turks and Caicos Islands, US Virgin Islands, Vanuatu (Uruguay was oficially added to this list a few days later)

NON-COOPERATIVE FINANCIAL CENTRES

Austria, Belgium, Brunei, Chile, Guatemala, Luxembourg, Singapore, Switzerland

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