Some years ago, a well-liked and highly respected Caribbean Ambassador regularly made the point that the region should follow more closely the issues that the OECD and the G20 were debating. He reasoned that any decision by one or the other of these complimentary bodies ‒ they bring together the world’s most powerful economies ‒ would always rapidly affect global policy, causing smaller nations to have little option other than to comply.
Although he recognised that the outcomes may not always be welcome and sometimes infringed Caribbean sovereignty, he believed that much more time should be taken to explore how their deliberations joined up with other policies, and to study the reasoning behind them.
They remain wise words. They are of particular relevance to the recent announcement by the OECD that it has begun a consultation process on whether globally, citizenship by investment programmes, including those operated by a number of OECS nations, offer “a backdoor to money-launderers and tax evaders”.
