Financial Transparency Coalition

In its list of Most Influential People this year, TIME magazine called Pope Francis a “moral leader in word and deed.” In the commentary on this accolade, President Obama said this of the pope: “His Holiness has moved us with his message of inclusion, especially for the poor, the marginalized and the outcast. But it

For about five years now, nations around the world have called on Switzerland to change its secret ways. Over these years Switzerland’s banks, which hold nearly one-third of the estimated $7 trillion in global wealth kept offshore, have borne much of the brunt of the U.S. Department of Justice’s campaign against banks facilitating tax evasion by American citizens. Other nations, such as India, have also followed suit. And although Switzerland has attempted to cultivate an image of international cooperation – the reality of Swiss banking secrecy has been more of the same. For the purposes of outward appearances,...

What do you call an entity with huge amounts of money, a monopoly on a hugely popular good, and no transparency or accountability structure whatsoever? The answer is not a corporation or a corrupt dictator. It’s FIFA. FIFA (in French: Fédération Internationale de Football Association) has a long history of bribery, questionable profits, scandals, and shadowy deals. As Tax Justice Network has shown, the organization has created its own “tax bubble,” forcing nations out of tax revenue by negotiating tax exemption from all types of levies, including income and sales taxes. Christian Aid has, for example, shown that in the...

On Monday, U.S. authorities are set to announce a massive $8.9 million fine on the French bank BNP Paribas. The fine is part of a deal under which the bank will pay for allegedly breaching U.S. sanctions with Iran, Sudan, and Cuba and handling $30 billion in transactions from those nations. Fines like this, even