Ethics and governance in the European Financial centers

The RTBF diffused a report carried out with a hidden camera in a Luxembourg bank a couple of days ago.
Questioned by Medhi Khelfat, Jean Jacques Rommes, director of the ABBL (The Luxembourg Bankers Association) rose: "This is the case of an alleged customer who comes and says “we will defraud the tax department, how to make? ”. It is the starting assumption. The banker has an answer which I would not have made if I had been in his place. It is not the banker who started. ” If a Luxembourger presented himself in a Belgian bank, in the same situation as the one of the report, it would do the same thing exactly, according to Jean-Jacques Rommes: the applicable rules are the same ones in the two countries.
The greatest tax havens of this world are the United Kingdom, the United States and especially the State of Delaware in the United States. Does somebody one speak? I do not have of it anything considering”

For Jean-Jacques Rommes, "saying that small states are tax havens and large states are the victims of the tax havens is a way of presenting the things that is a complete manipulation."



A couple of comments:

I agree with Mr Rommes when he raises the question of the UK and of the United States and especially the State of Delaware that is not quoted as a tax haven in the Stop tax Havens Abuse act.
I agree with him when he states that saying that small states are tax havens and that large states are the victims of the tax tavens is a way of presenting the things that is a complete manipulation.


But, the RTBF experiment reminds me of the documentary carried out by the German TV about the Luxembourg subsidiary companies of German banks a few months ago.

Above all when the business doctrine of Mr Rommes predecessor, who chairs the special parliamentary commission “economic and financial crisis, is that “It is not our duty to control if the taxpayer was honest”, one should not expect another behaviour.

Noone in Luxembourg repudiated the doctrine that definitely favours frauds.

I do not think that we will be able to find in another jurisdiction a leader who standardises fraud, thanks to the legendary luxembourgish pragmatism : therefore applicable rules as implemented are not the same ones in both countries.