by Vivian Tyson -SUN Senior Editor

The Turks and Caicos is seeking to worm its way from the anti-money laundering grey list by signing a raft of Tax Information Exchange Agreements (TIEA) that would move place it onto the white list.

At present, the Turks and Caicos Islands is still way below the standard of jurisdictions that have high quality anti-money laundering control, having signed only four Agreements. To meet the standard countries need to sign at least 14 TIEAs.

According to Ministry of Finance, the Turks and Caicos Islands expects to sign at least fourteen Tax Information Exchange Agreements with the Organisation of Economic Corporation and Development (OECD) countries shortly.

According to the Finance Ministry, Agreements signed with the United Kingdom and the Netherlands in July of this year were negotiated on a multilateral basis, making the TCI among the first members of the OECD Global Forum to use this process. 

The other countries that were part of this process were six of the seven countries of the Nordic Alliance (Norway, Iceland, Denmark, Greenland, Faroe Islands and Finland) and the Slovak Republic. 

In September, according to the Finance Ministry, the TCI signed a treaty with Denmark and in October completed the technical negotiations with the other countries of the Nordic Alliance thereafter initialing an additional six treaties.

The TCI also signed TIEAs with Ireland in July, this year and one with France in October this year as well. “Bilateral technical negotiations have also been completed between the TCI and Germany, Canada, Australia and New Zealand with the respective treaties being initialed.  The signature of these treaties will bring the number of TIEAs signed with OECD countries to fifteen,” the Ministry noted, acknowledging that the execution of a minimum of twelve treaties is necessary for the TCI to move from the grey list to the white list.