April 17 2016
Indian Finance Minister Arun Jaitley has joined the G20 leadership in fighting money laundering, tax evasion and terror financing while calling upon tax havens to become transparent in this regard and share information. After a meeting of G20 finance ministers and central bank governors, attended by Jaitley and Reserve Bank of India (RBI) governor Raghuram Rajan from India, a joint communique also warned non-cooperative jurisdictions with “defensive” steps.
The G20 leadership said it was important to improve transparency in the global financial system to prevent the misuse of such entities for illegal acts such as corruption, tax evasion, terror financing and money laundering. It said all countries and jurisdictions must become members of the Financial Action Task Force on Money Laundering that was established at the G7 Summit of rich nations in Paris in 1989. India is a member of this initiative.
Held on the margins of the World Bank-International Monetary Fund Spring Meetings, the G20 said countries that have not committed to automatic exchange of information by 2017 or 2018 must do so without any further delay.
“We mandate the OECD (Organisation of Economic Cooperation and Development) working with G20 countries to establish objective criteria by our July meeting to identify non-cooperative jurisdictions with respect to tax transparency,” the communique said.
“Defensive measures will be considered by G20 against non-cooperative jurisdictions if progress as assessed by the Global Forum is not made,” it said adding it looked forward to its report before the end of the year for further decisive action.