{"id":5865,"date":"2010-01-20T11:58:04","date_gmt":"2010-01-20T09:58:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/?p=5865"},"modified":"2010-01-20T11:58:04","modified_gmt":"2010-01-20T09:58:04","slug":"the-last-thing-africa-needs-is-a-tax-haven","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/2010\/01\/20\/the-last-thing-africa-needs-is-a-tax-haven\/","title":{"rendered":"The last thing Africa needs is a tax haven"},"content":{"rendered":"

Tax haven risks corruption, OECD warns Ghana | \t\t\t\tBusiness | \t\t\t\tguardian.co.uk <\/a>.<\/p>\n

As the Guardian notes:<\/p>\n

Ghana has had a stern <\/a>warning from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development to ensure that its emergence as a tax haven does not fuel corruption and crime in west Africa.<\/p>\n

Ghana is becoming an offshore financial centre but Jeffrey Owens, head of the OECD's Tax Centre, said: \"The last thing Africa needs is a tax haven in the centre of the African continent.\"<\/p>\n

The OECD is in talks with Ghana to guarantee the country \"adheres to the highest standards and integrity\". Owens said Ghanaian officials \"are aware of the risks they are running\".<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

They might be. But let's be clear, they're not the real moves and shakers behind this. As the Guardian also notes:<\/p>\n

Barclays Bank has been advising Ghana's government on establishing its financial centre.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Wilson Prichard, a researcher at the Institute of Development Studies at Sussex University said:<\/p>\n

Aside from the general social costs associated with the operation of tax havens globally, in the absence of a very strong regulatory framework and very strong standards of transparency there's a particularly high risk that a tax haven in west Africa, which is home to major oil wealth and high levels of corruption, could facilitate large-scale corruption and tax evasion, and pose a correspondingly large risk to good governance and economic growth in the region.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

But Barclays are backing it anyway.<\/p>\n

And you want a better example than that of the complete and utter social irresponsibility of banks in the face of the risk of corruption, fraud and social breakdown?<\/p>\n

It would be hard to find unless it is PricewaterhouseCoopers' support for the development of a tax haven in Jamaica<\/a>.<\/p>\n

This is the financial services industry pursuing profit at cost to society at large. There's nothing new about that. But the time has come to stop it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Tax haven risks corruption, OECD warns Ghana | Business | guardian.co.uk . As the Guardian notes: Ghana has had a stern warning from the Organisation
 Read the full article…<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,19,8,32],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5865","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-barclays","category-development","category-pwc","category-tax-havens"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5865","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5865"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5865\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5865"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5865"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5865"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}