Ethics and governance in the European Financial centers

The Royal Gazette has quoted Senator Levin.
American lawmakers will waste no time in helping President-elect Barack Obama to fulfill his campaign promise to "shut down the tax havens", a leading US Senator has indicated.
The President-elect has co-sponsored our bill, which goes after the misuse of these tax havens, the avoidance of taxes by American taxpayers, individuals and corporations using the Cayman Islands and all these other places to avoid paying their bills to Uncle Sam," Sen. Levin said in an interview broadcast on Bloomberg Television last Friday.

The FT has reported that Michael Foot, a former deputy director of the Bank of England is gonna review the three Crown dependencies of Jersey, Guernsey and the Isle of Man, plus nine overseas territories with significant financial centres, including Bermuda, Cayman Islands and Gibraltar. It will investigate their financial supervision, taxation, financial crisis management and international co-operation.

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The Fundation Robert Schuman has recently reported that he European Commission addressed a reasoned opinion to Luxembourg asking it to modify parts of its legislation in terms of savings taxation. The Commission believes that Luxembourg legislation is not compatible with parts of the "Savings" directive adopted in 2003 and for which the Commission has put forward an extension. This directive notably says that paying agents (banks, financial institutions etc ...) either report interest income received by taxpayers resident in other EU Member States or levy a withholding tax on the interest income received. However, Luxembourg also gives an exemption from withholding tax to interest payments made to beneficial owners who benefit from the so-called "non-domiciled resident" status in their country of residence. This allows Britons, Irish and Maltese citizens to avoid all taxation on the capital they invest in Luxembourg

That is not a surprise.