States sharing banking information expose a "deep pool" of offshore money: OECD

PARIS (Reuters) – Governments have discovered billions of dollars in offshore funds since they began sharing details about their bank accounts last September, the organization for cooperation and cooperation said on Friday. (OECD).

More than 90 governments have shared information on 47 million offshore accounts with other governments since the start of large-scale banking data exchanges, the OECD said in a statement.

The information includes balances and transactions on accounts holding a total of 4.9 billion euros ($ 5.5 billion), said the Paris-based policy advisory forum, more than the domestic product crude from Japan.

Under the OECD Common Standard for Reporting Account Data, participating countries started to automatically share bank account information in September.

This initiative was the culmination of a two-decade international crackdown on tax evasion that virtually ended bank secrecy in many financial centers.

"The transparency initiatives we have designed and implemented in the G20 have uncovered a large pool of offshore funds that can now be effectively taxed by authorities around the world," said Angel Gurria, president of the G20. 39, OECD, in a statement.

Gurria, who is due to present the data to the finance ministers of the 20 Economic Power Group at a meeting in Japan this weekend, said compliance with tax obligations was already improving.

The tax authorities recorded additional revenue of more than $ 95 billion through voluntary disclosures before automatic information sharing was put in place in September, the OECD said, increasing its estimate of 2 billions of dollars compared to November.