En spite of announcements by the G7 and measures sponsored by the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) over the past fifteen years, tax havens have been thriving around the world. They house colossal fortunes belonging to tax evaders, drug traffickers, mafiosos, corrupt dictators, oligarchs… Economist Gabriel Zucman estimates the amount of hidden assets at 8,700 billion dollars [environ 8 250 milliards d’euros]. These are pharaonic sums, which escape the States, despoiled and indebted, and which must face expenses related to health, education, climate change…
These criminals profit from these masses of money which they launder and invest in the economy without ever appearing. They buy yachts, private jets, luxury villas. Nothing is in their name. They have recourse to front companies and trusts which serve as a screen and prevent the identification of their assets.
Europe traditionally occupies a privileged position, offering multiple offshore places such as Cyprus, Malta, the Channel Islands, Gibraltar… It also benefits from the know-how of bankers and trustees from Luxembourg, Switzerland, Liechtenstein… These the latter manage accounts and assets opened in the name of fictitious companies. Only the banker and the fund manager know the “economic beneficiary” of the accounts.
Concern for financial transparency
It is precisely to remedy this that, in a legitimate and necessary concern for financial transparency, the European Parliament and the Council of the European Union adopted in 2018 a directive creating, in each Member State, a centralized register of these accounts and of their beneficial owners: bankers are now required to declare the true beneficiaries to a central authority. This is a step forward of the first importance. Centralization means a decline in banking secrecy and allows the authorities to exercise real control.
The directive went further, because it made it accessible to the public, “in order to allow greater control of information by civil society, in particular the press and civil society organizations”considering that everyone is concerned by the fight against money laundering. The world, in partnership with sixteen international media, was thus able to analyze the Luxembourg register and publish the results in February 2021 in the operation called OpenLux. The press had noted the prosperity of dirty money in Luxembourg and denounced flaws in the collection of information appearing in the register, which was sometimes inaccurate and fragmented.
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