It is even better news for governments at the moment because they need every cent they can get because the worst downturn in decades is shrinking state revenue and bloating outgoings, Angel Gurria, secretary general of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and development, told Reuters in an interview.
After Belgium and others, Switzerland, Austria and Luxembourg offered on Friday to relax strict bank secrecy in some tax evasion cases in a response to international pressure on tax havens, which is rattling the offshore banking industry.
The OECD spearheaded a campaign with limited success in the earlier half of the decade but its efforts have been given a new lease of life by governments responding to the global financial crisis, notably the G20 economic powers.
Gurria, who attended a meeting tagged to the end of talks among G20 finance ministers in Horsham, south of London, on Saturday, said the international pressure had triggered a "dramatic transformation in just a few days".
The OECD has supplied the G20 governments with information showing which countries met its standards on cooperation in tax matters. G20 finance ministers were preparing a G20 summit due to take place on April 2 and considering whether or not to revise a blacklist of tax havens they would move against.
As far as some still recalcitrant tax havens in places such as the Caribbean were concerned, Gurria said:
"It's going to be difficult to stay out of the loop now".
TALKS ON MONDAY
Among the large financial centres, Gurria said, the likes of Singapore and Hong Kong were now looking to adhere to standards of disclosure established by the Paris-based OECD and Andorra and Liechtenstein had gone public with similar intentions.
Then the Belgians budged on bank secrecy, followed on the eve of the G20 meetings in England by the Swiss, Austrians and Luxembourg, he said.
"We're now working with Monaco," he said, noting that he had been in touch with "the highest authorities" there in the issue and that further contacts were due on Monday to clear the way for similar moves.
A small principality on the Mediterranean, Monaco is famed for its wealthy residents and casino.
Estimates of how much is stored in offshore accounts range from one or two to more than 10 trillion dollars, according to various estimates made in the past decade and cited by the OECD in various reports.
Gurria said it was hard to put a price tag on it just as it was impossible to price the size of the parallel economy in general, but that governments would in any case be delighted to see things moving after years of inertia.
"Clearly governments need every penny they can get into the coffers of their national treasuries due to the recession," he said.
German Finance Minister Peer Steinbrueck told Der Spiegel, a German weekly, his country was happy about the announcements in neighbouring countries where Germany is worried many nationals park money to duck tax. But he remained cautious.
"We're happy about the positive developments. But declarations of intent have to be backed by concrete acts," he said.
So far, Switzerland was not talking about providing names of bank account holders, he said.
Gurria's response was that the pledges to start to lift the lid on decades of strict bank secrecy were a stating point.
"It's early days. This is happening as we speak," he said.
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