A Luxembourg non-governmental organisation, the Cercle de Coop?©ration, has been forced to withdraw a study explaining how their country is a secrecy jurisdiction, and how it causes grave damage to developing countries.

The Cercle has made an extremely important step towards a public debate on tax issues that is long overdue. The study has prompted a furious reaction from various quarterse including, for obvious reasons, Luxembourg's finance industry, represented by the Luxembourg Bankers' Association.

The bankers' attacks, however, fail to address the main issues that the report identifies, but instead focuses on minor technical details -- suggesting the study has correctly analysed the problem caused by Luxembourg. It is extremely important that this debate continue-- and let us not forget that development NGOs have a moral responsibility to point to the negative effects of tax flight on development, under their mandates.

The Cercle has been forced to withdraw the study from their website. However, another organisation still has a link to it here(in German only); and for a simple explanation of what's going on please take a look at this analysis by Luxembourg accountant Jerome Turquey.

We have long been aware of the poisonous attacks on offshore dissidents in secrecy jurisdictions like Jersey and the Cayman Islands; without having all the facts available on Luxembourg, we can only imagine that this is the same sort of thing.

NB: reproduced from TJN blog because of the significance of the issue.

Note in contrast that the UK government has not required that Oxford University's incompetent attack on NGOs has not been withdrawn.