PRIVACY ORIENTED | From the age of BIG BROTHER – greetings!

The loony twits that run Gibraltar’s government have sided with the privacy and independence hating OECD, and issued a statement announcing proudly that they had given up on protecting financial privacy in their domain. The boldly went on to state that they had long said they’d do this and are currently putting the final touches on a US-Gibraltar Tax Information Exchange Agreement. Sad day. (UPDATE: 04 April 2009 – the US-Gibraltar TIEA was signed on Wednesday, the 1st of April, but it hasn’t been revealed to the public yet).

Et tu, Gibraltar? But you were so great! Why, GibRock, why?

This hideous information comes from GibFocus.

Gibraltar Government reaffirms its OECD exchange of information commitments, and gives update on progress

In the context of the ongoing debate and proposals for reform of the world financial system in the run up to the forthcoming G20 London summit, the Government of Gibraltar has repeated its longstanding commitment to exchange of information on the basis of the current OECD Model Agreement. “We share the view that international co-operation in tax matters has become increasingly important, and will inevitably and necessarily be an ingredient of the new financial order that will emerge in the aftermath of the current global financial crisis,” said the Government. “Gibraltar remains willing to participate in exchange of information on the OECD model basis. Gibraltar is one of the countries and territories that has committed to the OECD standard. We have concluded negotiations of the text of an agreement with the United States of America, and of the operative parts of the text with another of the largest OECD countries. Both are due to be signed shortly. In November last year the Gibraltar Government offered such agreements to all OECD member countries, through the OECD itself. Others have also received the offer by direct bilateral approach.

“Gibraltar is an integral part of the European Union, including its single market in financial services.

“Accordingly, all EU Regulatory and Supervisory directives and other laws, as well as all European Union laws, agreements and measures relating to transparency, exchange of information (including for tax purposes) and Regulatory co-operation and direct taxation already apply in Gibraltar. Gibraltar’s finance centre is thus “on-shore” the EU.

Gibraltar accordingly welcomes the current initiative to ensure the raising of the bar on a broader, more global basis. We welcome the recent commitment made by some countries to the OECD exchange of information standard, which finally levels the playing field in this important area.

“Gibraltar accordingly re-iterates that it continues to stand ready to conclude bilateral exchange of information agreements with OECD countries as and when individual countries may wish to conclude such agreements with Gibraltar.”

And it’s true, Gibraltar already said they’d do all this.  Here it is, in their statement of cooperation with the OECD, signed 27 February 2002. They agree to the following (in regards to bank secrecy):

To allow tax information to be exchanged, only upon specific request with designated authorities in OECD Member countries, in criminal tax matters by 31 December 2003 and in civil tax matters by 31 December 2005. Such information will be exchanged in accordance with tax information exchange agreements to be negotiated by Gibraltar, with appropriate safeguards against “fishing expeditions”.

The information in paragraph (1) above will be provided without regard to whether or not there is a tax interest of Gibraltar in the case or in obtaining the information.

In the case of information required for the investigation and prosecution of criminal tax cases, the information will be provided without the requirement that the conduct being investigated would constitute a crime under the laws of Gibraltar if it occurred in Gibraltar.

Gibraltar will ensure that their Government will have access to bank information relevant to tax matters of business enterprises, individuals and other entities including trusts.

They hadn’t actually implemented any of that until now only because they hadn’t signed any TIEA’s. Now they have with the USA. They say they’re open to all OECD member countries too. I wanna know, what’s so freakin’ bad about being on the OECD’s “black list?”

The tiny Principality of Monaco on the French Riviera is (or should I say “was”) one of the premier spots to stash your money away if you want a pretty good assurance of confidentiality. That is changing, however, with the latest drive by the OECD to squash foreign sovereign nation states that actually afford freedom to their peoples and respect privacy. Monaco’s government was right not to give in previously and sign up to the diktat of foreign bureaucrat revenue collectors. Eventually the OECD betrayed all those who acceded to their demands the first time by once again drawing up a new blacklist with (probably) all the old countries on it. So what was gained long-term for those countries?

Monaco Harbor, Monte Carlo

NOTHING. What did Monaco gain in those years? Self respect, pride and relief that they’d not taken the bait after finally witnessing the scam come to a head, I’d hope. But that all came crashing down in the last week’s time as Monaco’s bumblers who decide these things morphed into morons who seemingly haven’t learned anything.

On March 12, 2009, the tax-loving statist frat boy, Henry Samuel, wrote in the UK’s Sunday Telegraph an article entitled “After Andorra and Liechtenstein, will “uncooperative tax haven” Monaco be next to jump?“ That’s a bit misleading because if Mr. Samuel had read his own article, he would have known he should rename it to “Monaco has Already Jumped on Board the Train to Hell with Andorra and Liechtenstein!” He reveals that he had a conversation with Monaco’s finance minister, Gilles Tonelli, last year. And I quote:

Tonelli railed against this, saying many countries were taken off the OECD list after promising to open up but had subsequently changed nothing. He said that the suggestion that there were only three tax havens in the world was “surreal” and “very unfair”.

“Regarding tax cooperation on private individuals, the information exchange that the OCDE wants us to do is not done by certain EU member states and some OCDE members – including Austria, Luxembourg, Belgium and Switzerland”, he said. (That changed today, as Belgium has announced that it will end its banking secrecy restrictions starting next year – meanwhile Austria, Switzerland and Luxembourg are huddling together to plan their next move).

“What about the Cook Islands, Tonga, Bermuda – a host of exotic names who promised to exchange information? We take our commitments seriously. We preferred not to promise things that we would not enact. Other countries did”, said Tonelli.

Unlike other non-European financial centres such as Hong Kong or Singapore, Monaco has signed up to the EU’s 2005 tax savings directive. This obliges most EU countries to exchange information on foreign accounts holders with their home countries.

Austria, Belgium (until today’s announcement) and Luxembourg have a special arrangement where they retain more secrecy in exchange for imposing a withholding tax on account holder’s earnings, some of which is returned to the home country.

Monaco has a similar withholding tax set-up. But Mr Tonelli insisted that if Luxembourg and Switzerland agreed to exchange information as opposed to simply providing withholding tax, Monaco would follow suit.

“Monaco naturally has no intention of keeping out of a general movement towards exchange of information once this occurs by all European states and financial centres.”

So there you have it, Monaco doesn’t care as long as “everybody’s doing it” and that way they they can just blame their own failures to maintain privacy protections on others. Well, I say blame Monaco’s tyrannical government! It is their fault if they implement policies like this!

The first commenter on the Telegraph article said it pretty damn well: Yet another nail in the coffin of personal liberty. Now the bureaucrats and politicians of all states appear to agree that citizens own nothing, save by the mercy of our masters – elected or not – and they alone will decide how much of our property we may keep. The Wars on Drugs & Terror have done their work. Only a few steps remain to complete the New World Order: collapse of independent currencies to be replaced by a global currency, and abolishing of national boundaries – to be replaced by new ‘economic regions.’

Then the London Guardian’s Brian Love wrote a story on March 14th about Manaco actually driving the nail into their own coffin on this issue.

Monaco to join tax haven shift – OECD head

On Friday March 13th, 2009, Bob Chapman, author of The International Forecaster (a highly recommended financial publication, by the way) was a guest on the Alex Jones Show radio program. After Bob give his analysis on the current state of the US and world economic outlooks (not good, by the way), the topic turned to the recently announced news that Andorra, Austria, Liechtenstein, and Switzerland would be changing their banking secrecy laws to accommodate the criminal parasite governments that make up the member countries of the Organization For Economic Cooperation And Development. In reality, these tiny tax havens are just trying to avoid being put on the latest “blacklist” the OECD is currently preparing – an event probably bound to happen every 5 years now that it has been such a smashing success. Expect other secrecy outposts to follow suit. It’s a sad time we’re living in. Anyway…

In the radio interview, Chapman exposes some of the more reprehensible modes of international arm twisting going on, describing this as but the latest example in “an effort to, in time, widdle down the bank secrecy in all of the countries that have it.” Mr. Chapman’s explanation of how the OECD, USA and world powers push banking secrecy havens around like a bully on the world playground exposes what kind of one-world-dictatorship-minded thugs these high tax governments are just crawling with. “What they also do, and I have seen it first hand. In places like Bermuda, the Bahamas and Caymans, they will go to the elected personnel in that country and they will tell them – in terms that they understand – that ‘if you don’t do what we want you to do, we cut off all of your communications, all of your internet, all of your postal facilities coming into the country, your access to banking in the United States (which is, of course, a key point), and we’ll make sure that you don’t get anymore tourists. And we’ll pay you x amount of dollars for doing this. And that’s exactly what happened in the Bahamas – (I know) ’cause I lived there, and I know – I know all the players, and I know how it happened. And so that’s what they do, and that’s what they’ve done to Andorra and Liechtenstein and Austira and Switzerland… and so they want to put them out of business. They want to be able to access the assets of every person in the world, and the reason why is they think it belongs to them! This is the sociopathic mind set, and they will continue to pursue that until they win or they get destroyed. …It will be very interesting to see what Switzerland does next.”

This is so true. I’ve often wondered what exactly the news copy writers mean by “yielding to intense international pressure” when trying to explain why this or that little tax haven has suddenly decided to scrap it’s human rights protecting financial secrecy laws. Pressure? They just couldn’t take all those accusatory foreign reporters calling them up anymore, so they said “screw it, we’ll change the law already, just stop calling us!” ??? Couldn’t be! I know they mean a lot more than their slick euphemism laden PR-jargon lets on. This “pressure” is not mere criticism from blowhards in the foreign press or governments. It is full scale embargo-style economic warfare threat and action. And when that doesn’t work, they employ the Hegelian dialectic – a la what I suspect brought about the 2008 Liechtenstein Tax Affair. A repulsively arrogant attitude and an equally disdainable ultimatum emanates from these wretched control freaks’ insatiable pie-holes. In sum, the OECD countries are saying, and have been saying for a long time, “we run the world. Do not contest us. You can only run your country if we approve of the way you do it because we have the big stick. You are our slaves ye lesser nations. Do our bidding at once!”

I’ll review the details on what is changing (at least for Andorra) in a future blog entry. Unfortunately, most of the articles hardly covered what these countries actually agreed to change in any kind of proper depth. Andorra was exceedingly worthy of praise, but I don’t know anymore. At least you’ve got until November 2009 to get your money out of their banks!