More on Gibraltar and Channel Island’s Dispute over Savings Directive

Stephen Harris

7 July 2005

The Gibraltarian authorities want to resolve the anomaly in the European Union's Savings Tax Directive whereby the offshore jurisdiction, being part of the UK, does not have to report on accounts held by UK citizens, as soon as possible, a highly-placed source in the dependency’s administration told WealthBriefing. They have not, however, placed a time limit on its resolution. Elsewhere, the British Crown Dependencies are not so sure. Peter Niven, chief executive of GuernseyFinance told WealthBriefing that he was disappointed that the anomaly had not been sorted out before the deadline. “It has been known about for several weeks and we were led to believe that it would be sorted out” he said. “The joint statement released by the UK Government and the Gibraltar administration talks about resolution in a few months. We need more urgency than this, we would like to see a firm date given to us by the end of July.” “All we have asked for is a level playing field and this is the basis upon which the Crown Dependencies signed up to the directive.” According to Mr Niven there is no evidence that investors are arbitraging between Gibraltar and Guernsey, a view backed up by source in Gibraltar. A potential problem may be competition from the building societies based in Gibraltar that are competing for retail business. If there is continued uncertainty this will be the weakest link, according to Mr Niven. “We’re also interested in how jurisdictions like Switzerland are going to react to this” said Mr Niven. “We haven’t heard anything yet, but we’re sure that they will be concerned”.