UK Tories Urge Dependent Territories To Stand Up To OECD

by Robert Lee, Tax-News.com, London

16 October 2002

Speaking at a fringe meeting during last week's Conservative Party conference in Bournemouth, Paul Baxendale-Walker, senior partner with a London-based firm of solicitors urged the UK's dependent territories to challenge the OECD's 'harmful tax competition initiative' in the International Court of Justice.

The Isle of Man Online news service reported on Monday that Mr Baxendale-Walker announced that the crackdown on so-called 'tax haven' nations runs counter to both the United Nations charter, and the OECD's own rules, and suggested that the threat posed by the multilateral group 'to the sovereignty and way of life of these jurisdictions was more real and pervasive than [that] against which the Falkland Islanders fought in 1982.'

According to the IoM Online, Mr Baxendale-Walker then produced research documents allegedly commissioned by the OECD which suggested that far from posing a threat to OECD member states, offshore jurisdictions actually work to the benefit of onshore countries and the global economy.

He went on to urge 'the resolution of this conflict over fundamental issues of state sovereignty by means of international law, not by appeasement of the OECD under its unlawful threats,' and concluded that: 'Appeasement never purchases liberty. It merely sells freedom at a discount. And the OECD, like any aggressor who is not resisted, will be back for more.'

'The OECD attack will not stop with 'transparency' measures. The project is manifestly the piecemeal dismemberment of the economies of 35 sovereign states.'

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