Tax havens: Uruguay enters the “gray list” of the European Union | After the revelation of the Pandora Papers

Uruguay He returned this Tuesday at “Gray list” of countries that the European Union (EU) is developing with those countries that do not comply with European standards for transparency and exchange of tax information but they promised to change their legislation. Costa Rica, Hong Kong, North Macedonia, Malaysia and Qatar are also on this list.

The country had managed to get out of the “gray list” in March 2019, during the last year of Tabaré Vázquez’s government, after approving a technical assessment carried out within the framework of the Harmful Tax Practices Forum by the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), the body responsible for making recommendations to the EU.

Uruguay started to be on the list by december 2017, when the economic owners of the 28 European countries gave the green light to the first list of non-cooperative tax jurisdictions, which initially contained 17 territories.

Later, according to the Montevideo daily El País, the ministers of the bloc approved a second “gray” list with countries or territories that had pledged to change their tax regimes for 2018 with the European Union.

Currently, the worst category for the European bloc is the “black list”, which includes Panama, American Samoa, Fiji, Guam, Palau, Samoa, Trinidad and Tobago, the United States Virgin Islands and Vanuatu, after the departure of Anguilla, Dominica and the Seychelles.

The a new announcement from the European Union has been unveiled this Tuesday, two days after the dissemination of research known as Pandora Papers – produced by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) -, which revealed escape maneuvers through offshore accounts of politicians, businessmen, athletes and artists, with the loss of billions of dollars for the state coffers.

“The Pandora Papers are going to put a lot of pressure. It is a message that they are going to focus on certain issues in certain countries which, in the opinion of the European Union, do not coexist well with the global tax system, “explained the Uruguayan tax expert, Fabián Birnbaum to the media El Observador, who clarified that the message for Uruguay is for I adapted its legislation.