LONDON - Curaçao and Aruba occupy the 90th and 75th place on the Financial Secrecy Index published today. The Netherlands is in 12th place in the ranking, led by the United States.
With the biennial Financial Secrecy Index, the Tax Justice Network, in collaboration with Oxfam Novib, maps out which countries are most attractive for hiding assets to evade tax or launder money. Sint Maarten is missing from the list of 141 countries.
This ranking ranks countries worldwide based on their legal and financial systems and the extent to which they allow individuals and companies to hide assets and launder money. This year's list is topped by the United States, followed by Switzerland and Singapore. The Netherlands occupies 12th place and is doing worse than notorious tax havens such as the Cayman Islands and Cyprus.
Milou Geuns, tax expert at Oxfam Novib: “The problems surrounding the supervision and enforcement of sanctions against Russia, for example, reveal why the Netherlands scores so high in the new rankings. We should no longer facilitate tax evaders, corruption, organized crime, and oligarchs in the Netherlands. This further exacerbates global inequality.”
Arnold Merkies, coordinator of Tax Justice Netherlands: “We are not surprised by the once again poor score in the Netherlands. It is still made too easy to disguise your property or tax avoidance structure via the Netherlands. If we really want to tackle abuse, we must work to change this.”
An important reason why the Netherlands still scores high in the ranking is due to the lack of insight and transparency in the area of ultimate beneficial ownership (UBO). Secrecy on this particular point helps the wealthiest individuals, criminals and companies to hide their assets and thus avoid paying taxes or sanctions, for example. In the Netherlands, sanctions – such as freezing assets and obstructing financial transactions – can be avoided because there is insufficient insight into assets and it is often difficult to trace the owner of a company established in the Netherlands.