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The Seychelles is discussing with European countries like Spain, Portugal, and France on issues of tax transparency and exchange of information for tax purposes. The Seychelles Finance Ministry has been engaging with its counterparts in these countries
The Seychelles is discussing with European countries like Spain, Portugal, and France on issues of tax transparency and exchange of information for tax purposes. The Seychelles Finance Ministry has been engaging with its counterparts in these countries.
Seychelles Ministry of Finance, National Planning, and Trade led by Patrick Payet, the secretary of state for Finance, National Planning, and Trade has been engaged in discussions with the conferenced officials in these countries between May 13 to 17. As finance secretary, Payet also chairs the National Anti-Money Laundering and Countering the Financing of Terrorism (AML/CFT) Committee.
With the support of the Seychelles Embassy in France, meetings were held in Madrid with the Spanish secretary of state for Finance, Jesús Gascón Catalán, in Lisbon with the Portuguese secretary of state for Fiscal Affairs, Claudia Reis Duarte, and in Paris with Jérôme Fournel, director of the Cabinet of the French Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire. Discussions focused on the legislative reforms undertaken since the year 2020.
The legislation includes provisions for the establishment of an up-to-date register of beneficial owners, as well as a secured and centralized Seychelles Beneficial Ownership database maintained by the Financial Intelligence Unit (FIU).
The parties also discussed the legislative reforms undertaken during the year 2022 in which all entities are now required to keep accounting information in Seychelles together with the supporting transaction documentation. These requirements are also applied to entities that are struck off and dissolved. All such data needs to be kept up to date and must be kept for at least seven years.
On February 19, Seychelles was removed from Annex I of the European Union (EU) list of non-cooperative jurisdictions for tax purposes, known as the EU blacklist, and added to Annex II of the list, known as the EU greylist. This decision followed the approval by the Peer Review Group (PRG) of the Global Forum on Transparency and Exchange of Information for Tax Purposes for Seychelles to qualify for a supplementary review in 2025 on the implementation of the standard of transparency and EOIR, including an on-site visit by the assessment team.
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Seychelles intends to continue similar engagement with other key countries to further the jurisdictions’ commitment to promoting tax transparency and effective exchange of information.
