Napier, MSCNewsWire,  9 April 2016 - Tough talking Meg Bouldoukian the international banker who says what other bankers think, but are afraid to say, has identified the United States as the cause of the main roadblocks in the path of free and legitimate world trade. These are its tax havens, indebtedness and trade embargoes.

The world’s major debtor nations are also the world’s major tax haven hosts, he said. The United States has the world’s biggest external debt and is simultaneously the world’s major provider of tax havens.

Mr Bouldoukian (pictured) said that indebtedness was tied to income tax evasion. The connection was immediately obvious to anyone looking at the external debt classification ranking of nations. The simple yet unrecognised equation: Indebtedness=income tax evasion.

In a keynote address to the Middle East’s major banking figures, the text of which has been obtained by MSC Newswire, Mr Bouldoukian now identified the United States for its additional role in stifling world trade by imposing its trade embargoes.

These sanctions and embargoes he said introduced “political agendas” into world trade. They had sown uncertainty and confusion among investors when economic developments should be leading to growth.

He cited the low cost of money and greatly reduced energy prices as two factors that should be propelling international trade.

Instead, he commented, the sanctions had been slapped on with the utter absence of any “alternative actions or solutions.”Pointedly referring to the United States, Mr Bouldoukian noted that the sanction problem and the tax haven issue were interrelated in being political measures only.

Tax havens, tax evasion “centres” must be recognised for what they in fact are, he stated. Wherever they were, and however they were described, he insisted they constituted always the same “circumvention of laws.”

An influential and emeritus figure in world banking Mr Bouldoukian’s rigorous denunciation of the United States’ dual role as gamekeeper and poacher in the matter of accommodating tax refuges is all the more embarrassing as he pointed out the damage it was doing to the economy of the United States.

Similarly, he pointed out to the private symposium of Middle East bankers in Beirut, the United States political leadership consistently failed to understand the “double-edged sword” self damaging nature of the embargoes that it called up, and then insisted that its allies participated in.

From the MSCNewsWire reporters' desk  - This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.