Trillions Hidden in Tax Havens Start to Look Less Safe

A global campaign to tax trillions of dollars hidden in offshore tax havens has made revolutionary progress, an official leading the drive said, rejecting suggestions that the super rich are running rings around Western authorities.   Pascal Saint-Amans, director of a unit at the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, also cast doubt on estimates that the havens are illicitly sheltering wealth equivalent to several hundred times the fortune of Bill Gates.

Leaders of the G20 group of leading Western and developing nations launched the campaign three years ago, aiming to claw back billions in lost tax revenue at a time when many governments are trying to cut huge budget deficits.

Saint-Amans said his gut feeling was that, before the G20's initiative at its 2009 London summit, people could hide their wealth in offshore havens without any risk of legal reprisals.

"Now you are at risk and that's a major change. That's a revolution," Paris-based Saint-Amans told Reuters in a telephone interview...

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