The Tax Justice Network (TJN) recently launched its “Financial Secrecy Index 2025”, which assesses the level of financial secrecy and the scale of offshore financial activities in 141 jurisdictions across the globe, and helps track tax havens and illicit financial flows. In details, the TJN assigned each jurisdiction a Secrecy Score ranging between 0 (full transparency) and 100 (full secrecy) based on 20 indicators, namely: Banking Secrecy, Beneficial Ownership of Trusts, Beneficial Ownership of Foundations, Beneficial Ownership of Companies, Freeports Ownership, Real Estate Ownership, Transparency of Partnerships with Limited Liability, Transparency of Company Ownership, Transparency of Company Accounts, Public Country-by-Country Reporting, Legal Entity Identifier, Tax Compliance Focus, Golden Visas, Foreign Investment Income, Public Statistics, Tax Rulings and Extractive Industries’ Contracts, Anti-Money Laundering, Automatic Exchange of Information, Information Exchange Upon Request, and International Legal Cooperation. In addition, the TJN stated that the index also includes a Global Scale Weight (GSW), which assesses the size of each jurisdiction’s share of the global market for financial services provided. According to the TJN report, the more financial services a jurisdiction provides, the larger the potential threat if the jurisdiction in question is not fully transparent. The Financial Secrecy Index (FSI) is then calculated by multiplying the cube of the previously mentioned Secrecy Score by the cubic root of the GSW (i.e. a jurisdiction's share in global financial services exports), and then dividing the result by 100. The jurisdictions are subsequently ranked according to their respective FSI Value. In this vein, the TJN noted that a bigger supplier of financial secrecy doesn’t always translate into a more secretive jurisdiction.

According to the TJN, countries included in the index are losing $492 billion in tax revenues a year due to global tax abuse by multinational corporations and wealthy individuals. Furthermore, the TJN report noted that out of the $492 billion in tax loss, over a third ($145 billion) is lost due to offshore tax evasion by wealthy individuals. The TJN commented, however, that financial secrecy does not only facilitate tax evasion, but also fosters fraud, money laundering, enables corruption, and other illicit activities.

In figures, the United States topped the list of covered jurisdictions in the 2025 Financial Secrecy Index, with an FSI Value of 2,018 signifying that the U.S. is the largest enabler of financial secrecy worldwide, followed by Switzerland (FSI Value: 1,398), Singapore (FSI Value: 1,228), Hong Kong (FSI Value: 1,111), and Luxembourg (FSI Value: 817). The United Arab Emirates emerged as the largest regional enabler of financial secrecy ranking also 8^th globally in the 2025 index with an FSI Value of 617, followed by Saudi Arabia (global rank: 22, FSI Value: 451), Algeria (global rank: 33, FSI Value: 351), and Qatar (global rank: 39, FSI Value: 303), only to name a few.

Lebanon ranked 68^th in the world and 10^th regionally in the 2025 Financial Secrecy Index (vs 77^th globally and 10^th regionally in the previous version of the index), registering an FSI Value of 163 (vs 149 previously). In fact, Lebanon recorded a Secrecy Score of 63 (64.6 previously) and a relatively low FSI share of 0.46% (0.44% previously), meaning that the country’s financial services exports represent a meager 0.46% of the world’s total. Lebanon recorded full transparency in 4 out of 20 indicators and full secrecy in 9 indicators.