FROM THE OFFICE OF PUBLIC AFFAIRS

Today Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill signed a new agreement with Jersey that will allow for exchange of information on tax matters between the United States and Jersey. The agreement was signed by Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill and Senator Pierre Horsfall, President of the Policy and Resources Committee of the States of Jersey, the Island’s parliament.
At the signing ceremony, Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill delivered the following remarks:

I would like to thank you all for being here today and welcome our friends from Jersey, especially the President of Jersey’s Policy and Resources Committee, Senator Pierre Horsfall. I also want to extend a very warm welcome to Mr. John Mills, who is chief executive to Jersey’s Policy and Resources Department.

Today cooperation between governments is more important than ever before as we work to ensure that no safe haven exists anywhere in the world for the funds associated with illicit activities, including terrorism, money laundering, and tax evasion. The United States and Jersey already have a close and cooperative relationship on law enforcement matters, including criminal tax matters.  We are well aware of Jersey’s commitment to cooperation in targeting criminal abuse of the world’s financial systems. 
This new agreement will formalize and streamline our current cooperation in criminal tax matters and will allow exchange of information on specific request in civil tax matters as well.  This agreement is an important development, and further demonstrates Jersey’s long standing commitment to cooperating with the United States on law enforcement matters and to upholding international standards in this area.  

I have spoken on numerous occasions about our obligation to enforce our tax laws, because failing to do so undermines the confidence of honest taxpayers in the fairness of our tax system. Access to needed information is vital to our efforts to ensure enforcement of our laws.

As many of you know, last summer I made a public commitment in Congressional testimony, to expand our network of tax information exchange relationships.

The significant progress we have made toward that goal, with recent agreements with the Cayman Islands, Antigua and Barbuda, The Bahamas, the British Virgin Islands, the Netherlands Antilles, Guernsey, and the Isle of Man, demonstrates the depth of our commitment.

Today's agreement with Jersey, an important financial center of Europe, further demonstrates our commitment to securing cooperation from around the world. We will continue to work vigorously to improve our tax information exchange relationships, and I look forward to gathering here again in the coming weeks to announce additional agreements with other countries.

text of agreement is attached