John Christensen on the OECD today:

The OECD is an organisation dominated by the world's most powerful countries. And they don't come more powerful than the United States and its close allies like the United Kingdom. So here we have an organisation that attacks banking secrecy laws in Alpine states but does nothing, nada, rien du tout, to tackle the secrecy spaces provided by trusts and offshore companies. Conspiracy theorists would be having a field day here, but we'd like to think that there is a process underway, with trusts, etc., being next in the firing line. Trouble is we know from discussions with senior OECD officials that this is not the case: there is currently no political momentum within the OECD to take on the issue of trust and company secrecy.

I am afraid he’s right.

The OERCD is targeting personal tax evasion. No harm in doing so of course. But it’s the small part of the market, and the small fry players.

Now they must hit the corporate and very high net worth market. And the Anglo Saxon sector that dominates that domain. Will they dare do that?

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