Time- Europe's 10 most influential people (6)

Jeffrey P. Owens

56, British

Why He Matters: He's busting open secretive offshore tax havens

Location: Paris







Posted Sunday, Dec. 1,加拿大留学生, 2002; 15.43GMT

Owens spent a week in the Cayman Islands in October ― for work. As the main

tax guru for the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD),

he is orchestrating a vast international effort to get offshore tax havens

such as the Caymans to clean up their act. That means, principally, being more

transparent about the methods they use to attract investment and being willing

to exchange tax information with other countries. It's a delicate task, as

many havens are stubbornly opaque in order to attract business. But since the

work started four years ago with the publication of a key OECD report on

"harmful tax competition," some 31 havens have signed up, leaving just seven

holdouts, including Monaco, Liechtenstein and Vanuatu. "We're all pleasantly

surprised by the willingness of the parties to come to the table," says Owens,

who boasts that his great-grandfather wrote the Welsh national anthem.



A change of tune by the OECD itself has helped. Ian Kelly, the Isle of Man's

tax assessor, says the initial 1988 report appeared arbitrary but that

"cooperative" tax havens are now included in the discussions on the details.

"I've always found Owens to be quite a reasonable sort of guy," says Kelly.

"He's trying to steer a very difficult round of negotiations." Not everyone is

happy. An August report by attorneys Stikeman Elliott on behalf of some havens

slammed the OECD's efforts as "discriminatory and inconsistent," not least

because it wasn't probing curious practices by its own members, especially

trusts administered in Switzerland and rules in the U.S. state of Delaware

that give special protection to limited liability companies.





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