INTERNATIONAL TAX PLAZA - Why is the letter from OECD’s Secretary General Gurría to EU Commissioner Moscovici no longer available via the OECD website?

(June 23, 2015)

We started this morning with being fully flabbergasted. It was late yesterday afternoon when we published our article on the letter that OECD’s Secretary General Angel Gurría supposingly sent on June 19, 2015 to EU Commissioner Pierre Moscovici (See our Article OECD Secretary General Angel Gurría expresses his concerns regarding the European Commission’s list of non-cooperative jurisdictions). In the article we quoted a passage from a letter that was available as a PDF-document in the section “What’s new” of the webpage “Global Forum on Transparency and Exchange of Information for Tax Purposes” from the OECD.

However, when we checked this morning the letter was no longer available via the OECD website and the link to the PDF-document that was available on the OECD website yesterday afternoon did not longer work.

At the same time we noted that a new news release has been published. This news release regards a letter that according to the news release was sent by Mr. Pascal Saint-Amans, Director of the OECD Centre for Tax Policy and Administration, and Ms. Monica Bhatia, Head of the Global Forum Secretariat, to all Global Forum Members. Although this is also an interesting letter, it makes us wonder why the OECD seems to have removed the letter that (according to the news release that was published yesterday) its Secretary General seems to have sent to EU Commissioner Moscovici on June 19, 2015?

Then to the letter that according to the OECD was sent by Mr. Pascal Saint-Amans and Ms. Monica Bhatia to all Members of the Global Forum on Transparency and Exchange of Information for Tax Purposes. We especially found the following three paragraphs of this letter interesting:

“It should be noted that the EU Commission has incorporated the Global Forum’s terms of reference into its principles of good governance in tax matters and so supports a clear link between compliance with the Global Forum standard and inclusion on a national blacklist. However, it is not clear how this aspect is factored into either the national blacklists or the EC’s list. In addition, the inclusion of harmful tax practices or “other criterion” in determining inclusion in a national blacklist makes it impossible to determine how this independently reflects on a jurisdiction compliance with the Global Forum standards.

As the OECD and the Global Forum we would like to confirm that the only agreeable assessment of countries as regards their cooperation is made by the Global Forum and that a number of countries identified in the EU exercise are either fully or largely compliant and have committed to AEOI, sometimes even as early adopters. Without prejudice to countries’ sovereign positions, we are happy to confirm that these jurisdictions are cooperative and we would like to commend the tremendous progress made over the past years as well as the cooperation and integrity of the Global Forum process.

We have already expressed our concerns and stand ready to further clarify to the media the position of the affected jurisdictions with regard to their compliance with the Global Forum standards.”

The full text of the letter which was sent by Mr. Mr. Pascal Saint-Amans and Ms. Monica Bhatia to all Members of the Global Forum is available on the website of the OECD via the following link.

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