ABC ‘CLARIFIES’ DAMAGING GIB STORY

Pressed by the Gibraltar Government, the rightwing Spanish newspaper ABC yesterday backtracked on an earlier article in which it made damaging, but incorrect claims about Gibraltar and its commitment to tax transparency.

The newspaper published a clarification yesterday following an article earlier this month in which it claimed Gibraltar was an opaque financial jurisdiction.
The article suggested that Gibraltar did not cooperate internationally with the exchange of tax information, a key issue for many governments around the world.

In fact, the Gibraltar Government has signed dozens of bilateral tax information exchange agreements and has legislation in place offering alternative mechanisms to share data, both at EU and international level.

Those facts were set out by Chief Secretary Ernest Gomez in a letter to ABC that formed that basis of an article published yesterday to set the record straight.

Mr Gomez told ABC that the Spanish Government had in fact made numerous formal requests for information in recent years – 26 requests in 2013, 18 in 2014 and six in the year to date.