By FAY SIMMONS
Tribune Business
Reporter
jsimmons@tribunemedia.net
ATTORNEY General Ryan Pinder said that blacklisting could have cost The Bahamas tens of millions of dollars a year and again called for the UN to abolish the practice.
Speaking at the Bahamas Financial Services Board’s (BFSB) Financial Crime Enforcement Across Borders seminar last week, Mr Pinder advocated for the United Nations to design an international tax policy that does not discriminate against small island states. He said in one year alone blacklisting could have cost The Bahamas more than $61m.
He said: “The United Nations is the appropriate body to design and build a truly equitable and inclusive international tax administration architecture, with equal-footed representation.
“The OECD cannot declare legitimacy for developing ‘universal outputs’ while decision-making and membership remain exclusive. We need a clean and balanced slate.
“The United Nations must now direct international tax policymaking as it has customarily been a more inclusive body for developing countries concerning international taxation.”
Mr Pinder said that blacklisting presents many challenges to the development of The Bahamas including financial diversion, being labelled as a high-risk jurisdiction and facing disaster recovery limitations.
He explained that penalties and costs from blacklisting has diverted $35m in 2000, which is $61,931,300 in 2023 when adjusted for inflation.
He said: “Penalties and new costs from blacklisting divert funds away from essential areas, totalling $35,000,000 in 2000 when The Bahamas was first blacklisted, $61,931,300.81 in 2023 factoring in inflation of the USD, affecting crucial development initiatives. This doesn’t account for the years since 2000.
“The risk profile of The Bahamas is increased to high when we are placed on adverse listings. The impact of this on the financial environment results in job losses, reduced financial institutions and foreign investment, penalties such as withholding taxes and time-consuming procedures for opening bank accounts, impacting the stability of the financial sector.
“As a Small Island Developing State (SIDS), low-lying nation and big ocean country, The Bahamas faces vulnerability to natural disasters. Blacklisting hampers access to international finance for instance from international insurers for disaster recovery, affecting multiple human rights, including the right to life, adequate housing, water and sanitation, food, health, work, livelihood, and the rights of displaced persons.”
He called for the abolition of blacklists as a punitive measure for global tax infringements and said the practice caused “extraordinary economic damage” on small developing countries.
He said: “One area that we think must be included in the UN convention is the use by multilateral organisations of blacklists to enforce their self-proclaimed global standards. We question the utility of blacklists considering the extraordinary economic damage it implores on us small developing countries. Countries like The Bahamas make up the vast majority of blacklisted countries, former colonies of European imperialists.
“We will advocate for a global position to be included on the use of blacklisting as an enforcement mechanism on global tax standards. We believe their use should be abolished given the fundamental breaches of human rights including our right to development.”
Comments
ExposedU2C 7 months, 1 week ago
Lame-brained Pinder would have us believe he has only just come to realise the enormous financial harm caused to the Bahamas by decades of bullying tactics by the OECD and EU countries.
The sole purpose of the relentlessly abusive blacklisting regime was to allow the elitist globalist bureaucrats to stamp out as much international tax competition as possible that threatened to force the lowering of the exorbitant tax rates in their developed countries caused by ballooning pension and welfare costs of their aging populations, and their inability (refusal?) to control the ever-growing size of their hugely over-bloated public sector bureaucracies.
Small and once tax-friendly nations like ours should never have succumbed to the bullying initiatives and other abusive tactics employed by the OECD and EU countries since the early 1990's for two insidiously evil but related purposes. The first one being to force smaller nations like the Bahamas to bear the great financial burden of enforcing the extraordinarily high taxation measures imposed by the OECD and EU countries on their own taxpayers. The second objective being to force small nations like the Bahamas to greatly increase the size of their own governments by having to devote significant resources to enforcing the draconian taxation policies of the OECD and EU countries. That in turn results in the blacklisted small nations having to impose higher taxes on their own taxpayers, taking away their once tax friendly environment.
Truth be told, the governments of the OECD and EU should somehow be sued for reparations by the small nations around the world that have been subjected to the relentless and most evil blacklisting regime since the early 1990's. Talk is cheap Mr. Pinder, and it's high time you put some serious action behind your words by leading the charge for the harmed nations to receive reparations for their unjust treatment. The same goes for the likes of Michael Paton, John Delaney, Brian Moree, Alfred Sears and others like them who should have never succumbed to encouraging our nation to simply bend-over and take a royal shafting by the elitist globalist bureaucrats.
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