Costa Rica Accused of Offering a Haven to Tax Evaders.

Costa Rica was listed as one of four countries on a blacklist of non-cooperative tax havens, published by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). Along with Malaysia, the Philippines and Uruguay, the Central American nation is accused of not agreeing to international tax standards and harboring tax evaders and their money.

The list will be used as a base for the Group of 20 leading industrialized and emerging nations (G20) initiative to crack down on tax havens, which are detrimental to their own financial systems. G20 leaders specifically discussed using sanctions to affect a change to the financial policies of the accused countries during the summit meeting on Thursday.

The OECD also published a “grey list” of 38 nations that have agreed to improve the transparency of their financial systems, but have not yet signed the international accords, validating the promise. This list includes countries such as notorious offshore money destinations such as the Cayman Islands, Monaco and Switzerland, as well as Panama, Guatemala, Singapore, Chile, Belgium, Luxembourg, Gibraltar and Austria.

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Filed under: Business on April 3rd, 2009