The Cayman Islands Government has announced the extension of comprehensive tax information assistance to seven new countries, under the Tax Information Authority Law, which was introduced in 2008 and does not need a bilateral treaty.

The seven countries now able to request tax information from the Cayman Islands under this unilateral agreement are Germany, Austria, Belgium, Czech Republic, Luxembourg, Slovak Republic and Switzerland, with requests able to be made over both civil/administrative and criminal tax matters.

"The Cayman Islands was one of the first jurisdictions to commit to OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development) standards for transparency and exchange of information in tax matters," said Kurt Tibbetts, Leader of Government Business.

"We have upheld that commitment by working with OECD and non-OECD colleagues to design effective standards, by reflecting those standards in our domestic regime, and then embarking on a programme to extend assistance arrangements to other countries; the first being our tax information agreement with the US signed in 2001.

The seven tax information agreements are currently being authorised and will be signed at a ceremony in Stockholm next month, with the commercial agreements to follow in June.

Mr. Tibbetts said that the Cayman Islands was also looking to conclude bilateral arrangements with the UK.

PARIS (AP) - The Swiss foreign minister said on Wednesday that her country never belonged on an Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) list of unco-operative tax havens because "we co-operate".

The list "was prepared in a non-transparent way, shall I say, by mandate of a few states despite the fact that Switzerland is a member of the" Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development, Foreign Minister Micheline Calmy-Rey said at a news conference in Paris.