FROM THE OFFICE OF PUBLIC AFFAIRS

Today Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill signed a new agreement with Guernsey that will allow for exchange of information on tax matters between the United States and Guernsey. The agreement was signed by Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill and Deputy Laurie Morgan, President of Guernsey's Advisory and Finance Committee.
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 Guernsey, especially the President of Guernsey's Advisory and Finance Committee, Mr. Laurie Morgan. I also want to extend a very warm welcome to Attorney General Geoffrey Rowland, who has been instrumental in facilitating cooperation with the United States on law enforcement matters, States Supervisor Michael Brown, and Mr. Robert Gray and Mr. Richard Green, two officials in Guernsey's tax administration.
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 Guernsey already have a close and cooperative relationship on law enforcement matters, including criminal tax matters.  We are well aware of Guernsey'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 Guernsey'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 in the Caribbean, with recent agreements with the Cayman Islands, Antigua and Barbuda, The Bahamas, the British Virgin Islands, and the Netherlands Antilles, demonstrates the depth of our commitment.
Today's agreement with an important financial center of Europe demonstrates our commitment to securing the cooperation of all our neighbors, not just those near our shores but those more distant too. I hope that Guernsey's cooperation with the United States in negotiating this tax information exchange agreement will serve as an example to other financial centers in its region and 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

Statement by Laurie Morgan, President of Guernsey's Advisory and Finance Committee