(Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development) of double standards.

At a two-day meeting at the end of last week in Paris, at OECD headquarters, Mr. Arthur also accused the organisation of "technocratic tyranny'' practised by "nameless, faceless people with no common sense''.

Delegates from the OECD and the Commonwealth met in Paris for further talks of the working group set up in January to try and sort out how the OECD's requests can be implemented.

Following publication in June, 1998 of its report on `Harmful Tax Competition' the OECD has put pressure on certain offshore financial centres to comply with its directives governing conduct of financial business.

Bermuda has agreed to comply and therefore escaped the "blacklisting'' applied to some other centres. Those centres that will not or cannot comply by July 2001 have been threatened with sanctions which may include a ban on the use of the US dollar. A group of centres are fighting this imposition and trying to find an appropriate way to satisfy the OECD while not destroying their own business bases.

At last week's meeting, Mr. Arthur said the OECD was applying double standards. It is holding the Caribbean islands to the July 2001 deadline with the threat of sanctions, but OECD member states Luxembourg and Switzerland are being given until 2003 to get rid of their harmful tax practices and no threat of sanctions has been applied.

There was some progress at the talks on an agreement to end the threat of sanctions against 35 offshore jurisdictions. Sir Ronald Sanders, Antigua's representative on the joint working group, said afterwards: "At the beginning of this meeting I think most people didn't think that the meeting would do anything other than fail. I'm pleased to report that instead of failing it has made substantial progress.'' The non-member delegates have stated they are willing to work with the OECD against harmful tax practices, but that the conditions under which they cooperate must be suitable for them. They presented an 11 point comprehensive proposal, which has not been published, on how to comply. At the meeting this was agreed in principle by the OECD representatives. And it was agreed that there will be further talks.

Mr. Sanders said: "We are seeking a global tax forum to resolve these issues, rather than one dominated by the OECD. OECD members are not now united on an OECD position and many of them would welcome a reopening of the issue.'' In the Pacific the Cook Islands has declared it will not enter into a committment to comply. Tangata Vavia, the islands' Justice Minister, said: "The Cook Islands does not accept the OECD definitions of transparency, non-discrimination and effective exchange of information, which are the substantive taxation issues raised by the OECD Harmful Tax Competition initiative.'' The authorities in the seven targeted Pacific jurisdictions have expressed concern about the lack of consultation in the process of commencing the initiative. They are also concerned by the failure of the OECD to produce any empirical evidence of actual harm said to be brought by the offshore financial service activities of the blacklisted jurisdictions.

Charles Cain, an internationally regarded fiduciary expert from the Isle of Man, has expressed great cynicism about the entire OECD exercise.

Offshore centres hit back He said: "We are all heartily sick of the OECD nonsense that has pursued us for the last two and a half years. We are sick of the cynical political agenda, the sheer hypocrisy, the technical incompetence and the transparent agenda that was launched by the OECD in 1998 in that disgraceful and dishonest travesty of a report `Harmful Tax Competition.' We know that bully boy tactics and political opportunism have in fact done the OECD grave damage.

"The OECD has, amongst its members some of the largest `tax havens' in the world; the United Kingdom, Switzerland and Luxembourg for example. The latter two opted out of the original OECD report, stating that they would not be bound by its findings.

"The OECD has explicitly worked on the basis that no member of the OECD can, by definition, be a tax haven. But those of us in the industry know full well that Switzerland is one of the worst offenders in the secrecy area, and its record in and well after the second world war inspires no confidence. And what about the United Kingdom whose company law is open season for fraudsters and which provides, in London, the primary money laundering centre of the world.

"If these countries are to be left out then that would be a travesty, a miscarriage of justice so severe that it may well discredit the OECD terminally.''