The EU has placed 17 countries
and territories on a tax haven blacklist and put a further 47 on notice. This follows
the revelations contained in the Panama and the Paradise Papers, and estimates
that about $673 billion is lost to governments each year due to aggressive tax avoidance.
The EU blacklist and will
be linked to European legislation to ensure these jurisdictions will not be
eligible for funds from the EU (except for development aid), but apart from
that, no real sanctions were put in place.
The blacklist includes
South Korea, Mongolia, Namibia, Panama, Trinidad & Tobago, Bahrain and the
United Arab Emirates, Guam, American Samoa, Barbados, Grenada, Macau, the
Marshall Islands, Palau, St Lucia, Samoa and Tunisia. Interestingly, only three
countries on this list - St Lucia, Grenada and Panama - are also actively engaged
in residency- and citizenship by investment programmes.
Hopefully this will further
counter the misperception that countries ‘selling’ 2nd passports are
necessarily synonymous with blacklisted tax havens or involved in dubious tax practices.
