GEORGETOWN, Guyana -- Antigua and Barbuda will continue to speak out against the false allegations against the region as “high risk” for financial services and the label of “tax havens”, said the country’s minister of trade, E.P. Chet Greene at a Caribbean Community (CARICOM) trade ministers meeting in Guyana.
In addressing the issue of correspondent banking relationships, Greene said that, without correspondent banks, the region’s capacity to trade would be so constrained as to make any legal trade virtually impossible.
“If the present trend continues in which our banks lose correspondent relations in the United States, which is our biggest trading partner, we will witness an upsurge in illegality,” he said.
Greene called on his colleagues to immediately declare at the end of the meeting, among other things that the CARICOM region is a non-secrecy area for financial services; CARICOM countries are compliant with international standards set by the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) and the OECD Global Forum, and CARICOM countries have tax information exchange agreements with every major nations and are implementing the US Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act (FATCA).
Courtesy: Caribbean News Now
