A prominent member of the Cayman Islands’ financial industry has hit out at the Organisation for Economic and Development, a group that has been putting pressure on offshore financial centres, as “impotent”, according to Accountancy Age.

The chairman of the Cayman Islands Financial Services Association, Anthony Travers, said in an interview with the publication that criticism from the Paris-based OECD on the role of the Cayman Islands as a centre for tax evasion was “one of horrible mischaracterisation”.

Mr Travers claims the OECD has ignored 27 multilateral tax treaties signed by the offshore centre as “they only count treaties in a form they approve”. “We’re baffled by the OECD… what they’re doing is nothing to do with the fundamentals of tax evasion. They’re such a political animal. We’re baffled about how they do their maths. The OECD is actually impotent,” he said.

The OECD, which is an organisation representing the world’s largest industrialised nations, has been putting pressure on offshore financial centres to weaken banking secrecy and open up to help root out tax evaders. At a meeting of the Group of 20 nations in London in April, countries vowed to use sanctions against countries that did not co-operate in stamping out tax evasion.

The Cayman Islands has become one of the world’s most important domiciles for investment firms, home to more than 80 per cent of the world’s hedge funds.

Mr Travers was quoted as saying that the OECD’s guidelines on encouraging offshore centers to sign international tax standards illustrates the issue is not about tax evasion, but rather EU countries seeking to control the flow of capital.

“It’s about tax competition not tax evasion. They [the EU] regard our low tax rates as threatening. People want to invest through a tax neutral platform. We’re tax neutral ­- we don’t add an additional layer of tax through our financial structures,” he said.