The Tax Justice Network has released its latest league table of most secretive tax havens, the Financial Secrecy Index. The rankings are compiled on this basis:

The Financial Secrecy Index (FSI) creates a ranking which identifies the jurisdictions that are most aggressive in providing secrecy in international finance, and which most actively shun co-operation with other jurisdictions. It attaches a weighting to each jurisdiction, according to the scale of cross-border financial services activity that it hosts.

And they reveal this shocker:

There is a tendency to think of the secrecy providers as “sunny places for shady people” – palm fringed Caribbean islands filled with shady law firms, luxury yachts and the brass plates of anonymous shell companies.

The FSI reveals a much bigger story. The major global players in the supply of financial secrecy are mostly not tiny, isolated islands, but rich nations operating their own specialised jurisdictions of secrecy, often with links to smaller ‘satellite’ jurisdictions which act as conduits for illicit financial flows into the mainstream capital markets.

So who do they consider the worst offenders? Well over half  are closely connected to Britain according to the FSI and the 2009 top 5 are:

1. USA (Delaware)

2. Luxembourg

3. Switzerland

4. Cayman Islands

5. United Kingdom (City of London)

So much for the tax haven crackdown… Let’s hope we don’t get a dose of Obama’s tax haven wrath similar to the one received by the Swiss. Click here to see the full list.

More Top Stories

• “Sir” Allen No Longer
• Moodys blames accounting for financial meltdown
• £6.5m loss for Vantis
• Big 4 faces auditing probe
• Tax Hikes Push Family Companies to Plan Bumper Dividends