‘Malta is main EU tax haven’ - study

Malta ranks first among a number of EU countries in a list of what a new study calls 24 “sink offshore financial centres”, which it says are typically characterised as tax havens. The study, published this week in the academic journal Scientific Reports, analysed the global ownership structures of over 98 million firms. It makes a distinction between what it terms conduit offshore financial centres and sink offshore financial centres. The authors say the data goes against the idea of offshore financial centres as being exotic, small islands that cannot be regulated. Malta was classified as a sink offshore financial centre, meaning it is a jurisdiction where a “disproportionate” amount of value disappears from the economic system compared to its GDP. The British Virgin Islands claimed the top spot in the classification, followed by Taiwan and Jersey. One of the study’s authors told Times of Malta that relative to their GDP, the data ranks Malta in 10th place in the list of 24. The next EU country on the list was Luxembourg, in 12th place. In absolute terms, Luxembourg shoots up to second place on the list, with the BVI retaining the top spot and Malta in eighth. Sink offshore...