In 2018, the Paris based organization OECD has listed CBI schemes of five caribbean countries for possible circumvention of CRS through these schemes. OECD said in its website, CBI/RBI schemes can be misused to undermine the CRS due diligence procedures. This may lead to inaccurate or incomplete reporting under the CRS, in particular when not all jurisdictions of tax residence are disclosed to the Financial Institution.
To handle the OECD problem, the Prime Minister of Dominica has called for unified regional approach to handle the OECD issue with CBI schemes. He called it is unfair and the caribbean has always cooperated with tax matters.
Skerrit, speaking on the state-owned DBS radio on Tuesday night, said the allegations made by the OECD need to be addressed.
“What the OECD and such international organisations are doing to Dominica and the Caribbean is unfair. The Caribbean … we have always cooperated with the international community on all matters,” he said.
“When we were advised by a study done by the World Bank to diversify our economies in the ’90s and introduced the offshore financial services, we went ahead with this and all of the recommendations and positions which were placed on the Caribbean … we have gone beyond what was demanded of us,” Skeritt added.
The Dominican prime minister told radio listeners that it is important for the Caribbean to stand in defence of its sovereignty and right to self-determination.
“We will go ahead with the OECD because they run the world. They will tell us what to do and we will have no choice but to do it, because we need the financial systems to operate, etc. But what they are doing is unfair, because a lot of things they are asking us to do they are not doing themselves,” he said.
“I am not quite pleased with the fact that in the Caribbean we haven’t had a united voice and a united defence on this. I am saddened by this,” Skerrit added.
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