Gibraltar Dismisses French Allegations

by Ulrika Lomas, Tax-News.com, Brussels

16 October 2001

The French parliamentary report on the UK and its offshore dependencies as financial centres which was published last week and was emphatically rejected by the UK Government has received similar treatment from the Gibraltar authorities, who call it 'incompatible with reality'. In fact, the Deputies responsible for the report need not be taken too seriously - although not exactly disowned by the French Government, they are regarded as harmless, rather along the lines of the infamous UK 'Beast of Bolsover', Dennis Skinner, who gets a lot of newspaper coverage for his outrageous comments but will never have office. Here is the response from Gibraltar:

The Government notes the release of a report by a group of French Socialist MPs on the financial centres of London, Jersey, Guernsey, the Isle of Man and Gibraltar. The French MPs visited Gibraltar last year in preparation for their report and have also produced similar reports on Switzerland, Liechtenstein and Monaco, systematically criticising each jurisdiction.

The bulk of the comments in the 180-page report are about the City of London, of which the French MPs are severely critical. There are few specific references to Gibraltar; what few there are are mostly unsubstantiated and unjustified.

The comments about Gibraltar in the report rely on Spanish judicial sources and reflect the usual Spanish line on our finance centre. The French MPs visited Madrid en route to Gibraltar before compiling their report and had clearly been negatively briefed about Gibraltar whilst in Spain.

Furthermore, the comments about Gibraltar in this report are wholly incompatible with reality and with the full endorsements of Gibraltar's co-operative status and highest financial regulatory standards by credible international bodies over the past year.

Indeed the Report cannot possibly represent the French Government’s view on Gibraltar given that one of those international bodies that praised Gibraltar’s standards in June 2000, the Financial Action Task Force (set up by G7 nations) was chaired by a French Government official.

The French MPs appear simply to have embarked on a general campaign against finance centres based on prejudices and preconceptions that they have been unwilling to discard even when faced with the facts. Indeed, when they visited Gibraltar in May 2000 the group of French MPs publicly made very positive statements about the Gibraltar finance centre and its standards.

Both the UK Treasury and City of London regulators have strongly attacked the motives, seriousness, veracity and credibility of this report. The Gibraltar Government shares that assessment.

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