Photo Gallery Casting Light on a Shadowy World
A May 18, 2012, meeting at Camp David between US President Barack Obama (left), French President François Hollande, Italian Prime Minister Mario Monti and German Chancellor Angela Merkel. Obama promsed in his first election campaign to clamp down on tax havens.
The European Union has its own problems with tax havens. No number of pithy declarations of war against the world's tax havens can disguise the fact that there are EU member states that pride themselves on their special discretion when it comes to financial and fiscal matters. In addition to Britain's Channel Islands (including Guernsey, pictured here), Austria, Ireland, the Netherlands and Luxembourg also exhibit some clear characteristics of tax havens.
German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schäuble: The German government, in its efforts to attack tax havens, is always constrained by the need to take its partner countries into account.
George Town in the Cayman Islands: The number of tax havens around the world has gone from a handful only a few decades ago to 60, 70 or even more today. It has allowed countries like the Cayman Islands to quickly grow prosperous.
