Ethics and governance in the European Financial centers

Richard Murphy has reported the following statement regarding regulating offshore jurisdictions:

"As global leaders meet to strengthen international financial regulation, it is urgent that they address the secretive and largely unregulated world of offshore jurisdictions.

By offering financial services built around secrecy, minimal taxation, and hands-off regulation, the offshore jurisdictions promote tax evasion and undermine transparency, government oversight, and the rule of law. Offshore jurisdictions routinely unleash anonymous corporations, hedge funds, trusts, and other financial entities on the world, and hinder international efforts to detect, stop, and punish misconduct. Inaction by the international community has encouraged an alphabet of countries to engage in offshore abuses, from Austria to the Cayman Islands, the Isle of Man, Liechtenstein, Monaco, Singapore, Switzerland, and more.

It is long overdue for the world community to take a collective stance against the offshore jurisdictions’ secretive, unregulated way of doing business. The nations of the world must adopt mechanisms to bar uncooperative offshore financial institutions from accessing international financial systems. We can fight back, and I hope the United States will take a leadership role in the overdue effort to combat offshore abuses"

Sen. Carl Levin (D-MI)

President George W. Bush, French President Nicolas Sarkozy and European Commission President Jose Barroso yesterday agreed invite world leaders to participate to a series of summits on the global financial crisis, with the first held in the U.S. after the US presidential election.

"We live in the 21st century, but we continue to apply 20th century rules. Hedge funds cannot continue operating as they have in the past; tax havens, neither; financial institutions that are under no supervisory control -- this is no longer acceptable, this is no longer possible. Together, among friends, among allies, we must be able to say to the world that we are determined to find a solution together, to find answers together."

(President Nicolas Sarkozy)


Know more

The last days the press reported that Fortis and Dexia, two major European banks that would have collapsed without the rescue of States, organised in Monaco a costly meal a couple of weeks after this rescue.

This is indecent.

Even though management of the banks explained these lunch were scheduled a long time ago, because of the crisis, they should have been cancelled or at least postponed.

Furthermore the lunchs took place in Monaco, a financial center that is considered as a tax haven, and even a non cooperative tax haven in the small list provided by the OECD . It was for the launch of a subsidiary in this tax haven for Dexia Private Banking.