Financial Transparency Coalition

I am at the conference of the Task Force on Financial Integrity and Economic Development in Bergen for the next couple of days. I’ll be talking on at least a couple of issues – country-by-country reporting being one of them, this morning. It’s in that context that the debate on the relocation of Wolseley plc in the Uk is interesting. As the Guardian reports this morning( apart from quoting this blog, from yesterday):

finance director John Martin said the government needed to end the uncertainty surrounding the taxation of profits in foreign subsidiaries to...

Download copies of every PowerPoint presentation, review the list of conference attendees, and watch streaming web-casts of each panel, speaker and breakout session at this year's annual Task Force conference in Bergen, Norway.

The Task Force on Financial Integrity and Economic Development is discussing beneficial ownership. As Elise Bean from the Senate Committee on Investigations says the problem is:

•U.S. states form nearly 2 million new corporations and LLCs each year, without knowing who owns them. •The failure to collect ownership information invites wrongdoers to misuse U.S. companies for terrorism, money laundering, tax evasion, or other crimes.

The Tax Justice Network got into mighty trouble last year for naming the US as the world’s premier secrecy jurisdiction. But the truth is that TJN was right. And the US knows it.

The 2010 annual conference of the Task Force on Financial Integrity and Economic Development in Bergen, Norway is now underway. Even if you weren't able to join us in person, you can still join us virtually as we're streaming the conference live on our website here... Opening remarks from Erik Solheim are now streaming live at this link.