25/08/2016 – In a ceremony at OECD Headquarters in Paris today, Burkina Faso, Malaysia, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, and Samoa signed the Multilateral Convention on Mutual Administrative Assistance in Tax Matters, bringing the number of participating jurisdictions to 103.

 

Mr. Mamadou Sangaré, Ministre Conseiller Chargé d’affaires at the Burkina Faso Embassy to France, H.E. Timothy Harris, Prime Minister of Saint Kitts and Nevis, H.E. Cenio E. Lewis, High Commissioner of Saint Vincent and the Grenadines to the United Kingdom, Ms. Theresa Penn, Counsellor at the Embassy of Samoa to Belgium, and H.E. Ibrahim Abdullah, Ambassador of Malaysia to France, signed the Convention on behalf of their countries in the presence of the OECD Deputy Secretary-General Mari Kiviniemi.

 

In addition, Andorra, Saint Kitts and Nevis, and Senegal deposited their instruments of ratification of the Convention today. As a result, the Convention will enter into force in each of these jurisdictions on 1 December 2016.

 

Grace Perez-Navarro, Deputy-Director of the OECD Centre for Tax Policy and Administration (CTPA) congratulated the countries. "With over 100 countries and jurisdictions now participating in this multilateral tax information sharing agreement, national efforts to combat international tax evasion and avoidance have been substantially strengthened." She urged those countries that have not yet done so to sign and deposit their instrument of ratification of the Convention so that they too can benefit from the different types of cross-border tax co-operation afforded by the Convention.

 

The Convention was developed jointly by the OECD and the Council of Europe in 1988 and amended in 2010 to respond to the call by the G20 to align it to the international standard on exchange of information and to open it to all countries, thus ensuring that developing countries could benefit from the new more transparent environment. Today it is the world's leading instrument for boosting transparency and combating offshore tax evasion and avoidance.

 

The Convention's impact grows with each new signatory; it now also serves as the premier instrument for implementing the new Standard for Automatic Exchange of Financial Account Information in Tax Matters developed by the OECD and G20 countries. It can also be used to swiftly implement the transparency measures of the OECD/G20 Base Erosion and Profit Shifting (BEPS) Project such as the automatic exchange of Country-by-Country reports under Action 13 as well as the sharing of rulings under Action 5 of the BEPS Project.

 

Media queries should be directed to Grace Perez-Navarro (+33 1 45 24 91 08), Deputy-Director of the OECD Centre for Tax Policy and Administration (CTPA) or the CTPA Communications Office.