Ethics and governance in the European Financial centers

The globalisation of the world economy has led to a close linking of the financial markets and to liberalization of international financial flows. As globally oriented financial centers, these countries have a vital interest in the worldwide enforcement of internationally recognized standards to prevent abuse of the financial markets.

According to reports by members from the French parliament between 1999 and 2002, all these country offered a safe haven for terrorist money and money launderer, and their respective authorities were doing nothing about it. The respective authorities said the report relating to their Financial center was out of date, and anyway there were some progress since the release of the reports.

The blog will not be based on the findings of the French MPs’ reports, but on facts that can be observed on public/official sources to assess the life of law and regulation that are said to be implemented : in other words, standards may not be in force and effect, there may not be a full and proper implementation of all necessary measures and the system in place may not be effective.

The more a Financial centre communicate that self policing is working and that the integrity and ethics are abide by, the stricter will be the conclusions on what is obviously actually going on that do not comply with the statements.

This blog is intended to share informatiuon that I am gathering to prepare a course I gonna provide to Students in the framework of a Master in Criminal Sciences (specialisation fraud and anti money laundering) to tell them about tax haven.

Most states that are said to be tax haven do no accept this qualification.

Actually, there are two cumulative conditions to determine whether a country is a tax haven or not :
- on the one hand there must be advantageous tax and banking conditions : nevertheless, this condition is necessary but not sufficient,
- on the other hand and especially a permissive climate that normalise bad management and bad governance increasing the risk of illegal activities in the country may be traced and provide the country with "bad money" for its growth despites controls that may be in place but that cannot detect every case.

The purpose of the following blog is as well to provide investors and banks head offices with facts that occur in European financial centers to assess ethical values that are stated by the states' authorities either govermental or professional. This blog may as well provide international assessors (IMF, GRECO, OECD...) with information.

The blog wioll focus on the following financial centers :
- Luxembourg,
- Switzerland,
- Great Britain, Gibraltar and the territories of the Crown,
- Liechtenstein,
- Monaco,
- Malta,
- Cyprius

Facts will be based exclusively on public and official sources i.e. legal, judicial, administrative... either national or international.

Therefore both investors and banks head offices will be able to make up their mind to determine the Financial Center that is best for low risks and especially reputation.