Financial Transparency Coalition

The 2012 annual conference of the Task Force on Financial Integrity and Economic Development will take place at the Ramada Plaza Tunis in Gammarth, Tunisia, from October 17-18. Illicit financial outflows from developing countries – which total around $1 trillion per year – undermine the tax base in poorer countries, eroding the accountability that is essential for good governance and global stability. Fiscal accountability is a key component of a well-functioning social contract, both of which have been absent in many countries in the Middle and North Africa (MENA) region, including Libya, Tunisia, Egypt, Yemen and Syria. MENA countries...

Oxfam America filed a lawsuit this week against the SEC for unlawfully delaying oil, gas and mining transparency provision of Dodd-Frank Act. Over a year has passed since the legally mandated deadline for the new regulations

An anonymous shell company is a corporation where it is impossible to know who the beneficial owners are. Beneficial owners are those people who ultimately benefit from, and are responsible for, the operations of the company. The result is a new corporate entity that can open bank accounts, sign contracts, receive payments, and perform all sorts of business without anyone knowing who they are actually doing business with.

Tech companies have been racing to acquire as many patents as possible for the better part of the last few years. Last month, Microsoft announced that it had reached a monster deal with AOL, buying 925 patents from Facebook for $1 billion, and then quickly reaching a deal to share the patents with Facebook for a cool $550 million. Many, many more examples of all the top tech companies - Yahoo, Apple, Google, Motorola, RIM - buying and selling huge numbers of patents have proliferated. Many of these patents are frivolous. For example, Apple patented 'smartphone multitasking' and 'swipe...