The Financial Secrecy Index is a ranking of jurisdictions most complicit in helping individuals to hide their finances from the rule of law.
Financial secrecy facilitates tax abuse, enables money laundering and undermines the human rights of all. The index identifies the world’s biggest suppliers of financial secrecy and spotlights the laws that governments can change to reduce their contribution to financial secrecy.
The Financial Secrecy Index thoroughly evaluates each jurisdiction’s financial and legal systems to identify the world’s biggest suppliers of financial secrecy. The index spotlights the laws and policies that governments can change to reduce their contribution to financial secrecy.
Financial secrecy facilitates tax abuse, enables money laundering and undermines the human rights of all. All jurisdictions have a responsibility to reduce their contribution to financial secrecy, big or small.
The Secrecy Score for each jurisdiction is calculated from 20 Secrecy Indicators, designed to assess the legal framework, systems and processes of each jurisdiction for their effectiveness at either permitting or preventing legal and financial secrecy for individuals and entities based elsewhere. The index grades each country’s tax and legal system with a “Secrecy Score” out of 100 where a zero represents no scope for financial secrecy and a 100 is unrestrained scope for financial secrecy. Our indicators are designed to provide clear directions for policy changes that would help jurisdictions become more transparent. They often follow criteria identified by the IMF, the FATF, the Global Forum, the European Union, or by the OECD, but in many cases we set a higher bar.
