LAC countries claim innocence as EU set to revise tax haven 'blacklist'

Less than two months after releasing a "blacklist" of 17 non-compliant tax havens, EU ministers are expected to remove eight jurisdictions, including Panama, Barbados and Grenada, after meeting on Tuesday.

A Reuters report cited sources close to the EU talks as saying the bloc was in the process of finalizing the decision. Should the announcement come as expected, two LAC jurisdictions would remain on the list - Saint Lucia and Trinidad and Tobago.

Pictured: A meeting of the EU Economic and Financial Affairs Council focusing on the tax havens list is held in Brussels, Belgium on Dec.05, 2017.

Their inclusion on the list led to protests by officials in Panama and Barbados, both of which issued formal complaints, which stated their firm commitment to tackling tax avoidance and evasion, as well as ongoing communication and cooperation with the EU.

Last December, hours after the publication of the EU list, Panamanian President Juan Carlos Varela called his ambassador in Brussels, Darío Chirú, and threatened to call back diplomats "from the countries that led this sanction against Panama," but ultimately did not do so.

Also in December, Barbados' international business minister Donville Inniss decried the decision as "extremely unfortunate and unfair in light of, and despite, Barbados' recent direct engagement with the EU Code of Conduct Group over the past months."

Inniss has since said he has been in communication with EU officials, but refused to disclose details of their correspondence.

According to reports from the Caribbean News Agency, T&T prime minister Keith Rowley blamed the previous administration and said attorney general Faris Al-Rawi was working to reverse the decision, but it would seem efforts in that direction have yet to succeed.

With reports surfacing that an announcement was pending, Panamanian vice president and chancellor Isabel de Saint Malo, was reported as saying by TVN: "We made our position clear in December. The inclusion [of Panama on the list] should not have occurred."

"We are confident that, after the technical and diplomatic efforts we have made, the list will reflect the reality that Panama is a country absolutely committed to transparency and high standards in tax affairs," added the vice president.

Grenada Prime Minister Keith Mitchell said Grenada ought not to have been placed on the list initially, having been included for not ratifying the OECD Multilateral Convention on Mutual Administrative Assistance, reported local news outlet NOW Grenada.

Mitchell said the problem was more related to lag in communication with the OECD and that the country had in fact met all of the criteria of the agreements and said that the OECD's financial and economic unit, set to meet on the issue on January 23, would acknowledge the situation.

It should be noted that eight more tax jurisdictions may soon find themselves on the list. The EU statement said that the jurisdictions (Antigua and Barbuda, Anguilla, Bahamas, British Virgin Islands, Dominica, St. Kitts and Nevis, Turks and Caicos, US Virgin Islands), all badly hit by hurricanes in 2017, have been given until early 2018 to respond to the EU's concerns.