The crusade against fiscal havens is not working. According to the BIS, “banks’ outstanding claims on offshore banking centres surpassed their previous peak recorded in 2008 during the Great Financial Crisis (GFC). Outstanding cross-border claims on offshore centres totalled $4.6 trillion at end-2017, compared with $4.3 trillion at end-March 2008.”
And yet EU ministers decided to remove eight jurisdictions from its 17-country tax haven blacklist in January, a decision widely disapproved of by officials and activists. Among those delisted was Panama, less than two years after its secretive tax loopholes were exposed by the Panama Papers.
