A political row has erupted over the French government’s announcement this weekend that it had removed Jersey and Bermuda from its official blacklist of ‘uncooperative’ tax havens. The decision has infuriated leading figures among the socialist majority in parliament, while Green party anti-corruption campaigner and former examining magistrate Eva Joly denounced the “trembling hand” of a government that had buckled under “the pressure of big corporations”. Mediapart has learnt that French foreign affairs minister Laurent Fabius had advised that the move, decided by finance minister Pierre Moscovici, was “politically inopportune”. Lénaïg Bredoux reports.
Jersey and Bermuda no longer figure on a French government blacklist of states that are uncooperative in the exchange of information with France’s tax authorities, according to decree published on Sunday in the official gazette Le Journal Officiel and which backdates their removal to January 1st.
