Liechtenstein committed to providing financial information to other countries thus abandoning a bundle of laws on bank secrecy, Agence France-Presse reported on November 13.
The small Alpine country will sign up to Multilateral Convention on Mutual Administrative Assistance in Tax Matters. Vaduz will also cooperate with the OECD countries in the development of new standards on financial system transparency.
More than 40 nations have already endorsed the Convention, including the G20 group. The parties agreed to exchange information on tax residents and fight against tax avoidance.
Liechtenstein along with neighboring Switzerland is alleged to be one of the leading tax havens. In November 2013, the country was ranked the 33th in the Financial Security Index; the full list comprises 84 states. In 2009, Liechtenstein signed an agreement with the United Kingdom which offered “amnesty-lite” deals to prompt the British customers to declare their secret accounts within the principality. In return, Liechtenstein agreed to close the bank accounts of those foreign customers who failed to prove they had paid their taxes in their home country.
In 2008, Liechtenstein’s LGT Group suffered a data leak that showed that the company promoted hiding billions of euros belonging to hundreds of foreign citizens. After that, the Principality faced severe pressure from Germany, the UK, and the USA.
