In a cou­ple of weeks mem­bers of the Eu­ro­pean Union’s coun­cil will come to Trinidad and To­ba­go. Talks will be held to help move this coun­try and oth­er Caribbean states from the re­vised EU list of non-co­op­er­a­tive ju­ris­dic­tions for tax pur­pose.

“For the first time in his­to­ry, on the 17th and 18th of No­vem­ber, we shall have the Eu­ro­pean Coun­cil of­fi­cials here. The peo­ple who rep­re­sent their gov­ern­ments at the Eu­ro­pean lev­el, who are co-de­ci­sion-mak­ers in the leg­isla­tive process. We’ll vis­it Trinidad and To­ba­go for the first time in his­to­ry,” said EU Am­bas­sador to Trinidad and To­ba­go Pe­ter Cavendish at the EU’s Port-of-Spain of­fice.

He ex­plained that the coun­cil will be go­ing to Bar­ba­dos and St Lu­cia be­fore com­ing to Trinidad and To­ba­go.

Dur­ing these vis­its, the cur­rent list­ing of Caribbean banks on non-co­op­er­a­tive lists is set to be on the agen­da and the Am­bas­sador is cer­tain pos­i­tive strides can be made on the mat­ter.

“I do think that the up­com­ing vis­it will al­low peo­ple to ex­press that view. I do think small­er coun­tries have ca­pac­i­ty is­sues in mov­ing quick­ly to change leg­is­la­tion, there are big de­mands on small­er civ­il ser­vices and in terms of what we’re try­ing to do to help as I said we will have tech­ni­cal ex­per­tise made avail­able but it has to be re­quest­ed,” said Cavendish

Trinidad and To­ba­go has been on the list since it came in­to ef­fect in 2017 and as re­cent­ly as Sep­tem­ber 2022, the EU reaf­firmed this coun­try’s place­ment on the list stat­ing,” Trinidad and To­ba­go does not ap­ply any au­to­mat­ic ex­change of fi­nan­cial in­for­ma­tion, does not have a rat­ing of at least “Large­ly Com­pli­ant” by the Glob­al Fo­rum on Trans­paren­cy and Ex­change of In­for­ma­tion for Tax Pur­pos­es for Ex­change of In­for­ma­tion on Re­quest, has not signed and rat­i­fied the OECD Mul­ti­lat­er­al Con­ven­tion on Mu­tu­al Ad­min­is­tra­tive As­sis­tance as amend­ed, has harm­ful pref­er­en­tial tax regimes (Free Zones), and has not re­solved these is­sues yet. Trinidad and To­ba­go com­mit­ted to ad­dress the BEPS IF’s rec­om­men­da­tions with re­gard to the im­ple­men­ta­tion of cri­te­ri­on 3.2 on coun­try-by-coun­try re­port­ing (CbCR) in due time, so that this is re­flect­ed in the BEPS IF Ac­tion 13 Peer Re­view Re­port in the au­tumn of 2023.”

The con­tin­ued black list­ing has been crit­i­cised, no­tably from Bar­ba­dos-based Trinida­di­an econ­o­mist Mar­la Dukha­ran, who slammed the list­ing of sev­er­al Caribbean states in­clud­ing Bar­ba­dos and Trinidad and To­ba­go and de­scribed it as un­fair and lack­ing trans­paren­cy as well as in­ef­fec­tive in com­bat­ting mon­ey laun­der­ing and fraud. Dukha­ran al­so ques­tioned the lim­it sanc­tions im­posed on EU mem­ber states who run afoul of the very guide­lines used to black­list the Caribbean states.

Cavendish how­ev­er ex­plained that EU mem­ber states do face le­gal con­se­quences for these breach­es when they oc­cur. He stressed that the list was on­ly cre­at­ed as a means to curb fi­nan­cial mis­chief in ju­ris­dic­tions where the EU can’t take le­gal ac­tion.

“We are ap­ply­ing these rules to our­selves which some peo­ple are not aware of. These rules are al­ways ap­plied, and there are le­gal pro­ce­dures tak­en against mem­ber states. It is be­cause we can’t take le­gal pro­ce­dures against coun­tries out­side of Eu­rope, that we have these lists. So it’s a sec­ondary mea­sure. But the ob­jec­tive is to get crim­i­nal­i­ty. And that’s what we’re fight­ing against. I think all de­cent cit­i­zens want these peo­ple to have as hard a life as pos­si­ble and not to get away with what they’re do­ing,” said the Am­bas­sador.

He ex­plained if a mem­ber state was not re­spect­ing the rules, then an in­fringe­ment pro­ce­dure can be com­menced against it and that could even go to a court pro­ceed­ing.

“Yes, we do have court pro­ce­dures in Eu­rope against mem­ber states. How­ev­er, we have a le­gal tra­di­tion. I’m not talk­ing about mat­ters that are go­ing to court or have been in court or re­cent­ly de­cid­ed up­on ex­cept for spe­cial­ist per­sons who may be rep­re­sent­ing the in­sti­tu­tions.” the EU Am­bas­sador to T&T not­ed.

Cavendish said this was not a case of the EU hid­ing these mat­ters, as he as­sured that in­for­ma­tion could be eas­i­ly ac­cessed via an in­ter­net search.

He did ad­mit that the list­ing has cre­at­ed chal­lenges for many seek­ing to do busi­ness with­in Trinidad and To­ba­go and oth­er Caribbean states in­clud­ing com­pli­ca­tions for his fi­nan­cial trans­ac­tions in this coun­try.

“In terms of the im­pli­ca­tions for Trinidad com­pa­nies, and even for my­self here be­cause if I’m mov­ing mon­ey, I get asked ex­tra ques­tions about why am I mov­ing the mon­ey to this coun­try,” he said, “There is an ad­di­tion­al cost im­posed up­on (busi­ness­es) in terms of the in­for­ma­tion and time they have to de­vote to an­swer­ing ques­tions for le­git­i­mate busi­ness. “

The EU am­bas­sador how­ev­er felt that Trinidad and To­ba­go had been do­ing well in terms of putting mea­sures in place to be re­moved from the list. He be­lieved it was not a sit­u­a­tion re­lat­ed to com­pli­ance but ca­pac­i­ty in terms of get­ting the re­quired changes done at a leg­isla­tive lev­el.

“I’m an econ­o­mist. I’m not a lawyer. But I think le­gal speeds are the is­sue. And as I said, the coun­try is a small coun­try. So per­haps you don’t have the ca­pac­i­ties that larg­er coun­tries have to move in­to the act. I un­der­stand that we’ve had ex­cel­lent ex­changes with the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al’s of­fice. We’ve had the tech­ni­cal peo­ple on both sides know each oth­er now by name. It’s not a ques­tion of just the things are go­ing be­tween the two heads of re­spec­tive or­ga­ni­za­tions, the tech­ni­cal peo­ple who do deal with these is­sues, know each oth­er and have been ex­chang­ing as well. So I’m hop­ing in that way to ac­cel­er­ate mat­ters. I think that we have to rec­og­nize that there’s great good­will in this great will­ing­ness to re­solve this, that’s not dis­put­ed. And we are look­ing for­ward to this wish to put this be­hind us,” he said when asked about the ma­jor hin­drance to­wards Trinidad and To­ba­go’s re­moval from the list­ing.

“There has been progress over the re­cent years. We have a lot of ex­changes, but with the po­lit­i­cal. I mean, talk­ing about peo­ple at se­nior lev­els and in­sti­tu­tions and se­nior mem­bers in the ad­min­is­tra­tion here, those are the tech­ni­cal lev­els. So we would very much like to put these mat­ters be­hind us and have wider deep­er re­la­tions on fi­nan­cial and oth­er ar­eas,” he said.

Cavendish al­so ad­dressed an­oth­er con­cern raised by Dukha­ran that EU grants of­ten lead to a fur­ther de­pen­den­cy re­la­tion­ships be­ing cre­at­ed by EU and these small­er coun­tries.

“The Eu­ro­pean Union on­ly gives mon­ey we give grants. The Eu­ro­pean In­vest­ment Bank which is the world’s old­est de­vel­op­ment bank. It’s owned by the Eu­ro­pean Union mem­ber states and the Eu­ro­pean in­vest­ment bank is able to bor­row at Triple-A plus rates. It is not for prof­it, we try to avoid that way to have dis­tressed debt,” he said.

The Am­bas­sador said the EU was ea­ger to de­vel­op trade routes in the Caribbean and not­ed sev­er­al in­dus­tries could be de­vel­oped in Trinidad and To­ba­go for these pur­pos­es.