The Panama papers and further leaks revealed that money laundering and tax
evasion are important issues, which often go hand in hand. The major role of
offshore centres is to provide secrecy. With this, offshore centres played an
important role for hiding illegal activities, criminal identity and criminal ownership
of assets right from their start. In the last years, combating tax evasion and
money laundering have become politically more important. A ‘hot phase of
regulation’ has started initiated from the US. The paper argues that Europe has to
find its own European way of creating compliance among its member states. For
this, creating transparency with regard to bank registers, beneficial ownership,
tax accounts and criminal investigations is important. The regulation of European
offshore centres would be a first promising step. A homogenous European antimoney
laundering and anti-tax evasion policy would need a differentiated EU
approach for different groups of Member States and not a one size fits all
approach.