April 13, 2016
WASHINGTON – U.S. Treasury Secretary Jacob J. Lew met this evening with French Finance Minister Michel Sapin ahead of the 2016 Spring Meetings of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank Group.
Secretary Lew and Minister Sapin discussed recent efforts toward concluding the first review of Greece’s economic reform program. Secretary Lew recognized that European institutions, the IMF, and Greece still had considerable work ahead of them and underscored the importance of concluding the review and agreeing on meaningful debt relief for Greece in a timely manner.
Secretary Lew stressed that we take the underlying concerns with multinational tax avoidance very seriously. The United States is committed to implementing the OECD/G-20 BEPS project, which has made important progress identifying measures to combat stateless income and tax avoidance by multinationals.
Secretary Lew also emphasized that maintaining sanctions pressure on Russia until it fulfills the provisions of the Minsk Agreements is essential. Secretary Lew underscored that the U.S. has fulfilled its sanctions commitments under the nuclear agreement with Iran in good faith and will not stand in the way of permissible business with Iran while continuing to implement sanctions outside the nuclear arena. Finally, Secretary Lew and Minister Sapin discussed French and EU efforts to improve their ability to combat terrorist financing, which complements on-going G-7/G-20 work to enhance global anti-money laundering and countering the financing of terrorism standards.
