Financial Transparency Coalition

LONDON – FTSE 100 mining firm Kazakhmys PLC is still refusing to provide full information as to the identity of its beneficial owners, nearly one year after anti-corruption watchdog Global Witness raised concerns over alleged links between the company’s management and Nursultan Nazarbayev, the autocratic president of Kazakhstan.

LONDON – The governments that have frozen funds controlled by Gaddafi, Mubarak, Ben Ali and their cronies should name the banks holding their assets, anti-corruption group Global Witness demanded today. A clear message must be sent to banks that doing business with corrupt dictators is unacceptable: first, those banks holding dirty money should be publicly named and then regulators need to devise a new system which stops banks from taking suspect funds in the first place.

LONDON – Global Witness has learned that Teodorin Obiang, the notorious son of Equatorial Guinea’s long-ruling dictator, commissioned plans to build a superyacht worth $380 million – almost three times more than his energy-rich country spends annually on health and education programs combined. This news comes amid an increasingly heated debate about how Middle Eastern dictators and their family members have enjoyed luxury lifestyles, as well as stashing their assets in foreign countries.

LONDON – The Publish What You Pay coalition strongly welcomes the announcement by the UK Government that it will push for the implementation of oil, gas and mining transparency laws in the EU. If introduced, such laws would require that companies listed in the EU publish what they pay to governments for the extraction of minerals around the world. This will improve revenue transparency, helping to eradicate the corruption that has blighted some mineral rich states and improve the lives of millions of people in the developing world.