Financial Transparency Coalition

You go to a DMV to get a driver’s license. You submit an application and take an eye exam, you pay the relevant fees, take a written exam, and then an official grades your score. If you pass, you get to take a driving test and another official evaluates your performance. Upon successful completion of these steps, someone takes your picture and 5-8 business days later your license arrives in the mail. Well, that’s the way it is for some people. But if you were unlucky enough to be taking your driving test in a country where corruption runs rampant,...

Illicit financial flows don’t just concern people taking cash (illegally) over boarders. They are also about people taking goods (illegally) over boarders. Some of these goods fall within the traditional concept of transnational crime—for example, drugs and human trafficking—and some outside the conventional scope—including natural resources like fish, wildlife, and timber. The Global Financial Integrity report Transnational Crime in the Developing World estimates the flow of funds generated by the illicit sale and trade of wildlife is $7.8 to $10 billion annually, the trade in fish is $4.2 to $9.5 billion, and the annual value of the illicit market in...

Here’s an interesting thought experiment. What would happen if you took an organization, gave it huge resources and publicity, required no transparency, and then asked it to self-regulate? A lot of corporations and governments would like to argue you’d get efficiency. As it would turn out… you’d get FIFA. In May of this year, the International Federation of Association Football (In French: Fédération Internationale de Football Association or FIFA), suspended two of its officials: Mohamed bin Hammam of Qatar and Jack Warner of Trinidad and Tobago. These men were accused of attempting to bribe the 25 heads of the Caribbean...

Pirates are a problem. Every year they cost the world between $7 and $12 billion in ransoms, insurance premiums, security equipment, naval forces, prosecutions, anti-piracy organizations, and economic losses to regional economies. And these economic costs don’t include the human ones, which are also sizeable. Every year seafarers are attacked with automatic gunfire and RPGs, beaten, and held in extended confinement as hostages. Pirates sometimes use these hostages as human shields against naval vessels and often abuse their captives, both physically and psychologically. Paul and Rachel Chandler, a retired British couple who were on the “trip of their lifetime,”...