Financial Transparency Coalition

On June 28th, only six days before the election for governor of the Mexican state of Tamaulipas, favored candidate Rodolfo Torre, was shot and killed by masked gunmen. Torre was a member of the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) whose main message commanded a fight against Mexico’s crippling drug activity. Drug-related violence and corruption continue to stifle efforts at economic and political stability and development in the country. Mexico’s largest economic challenges are primarily reducing poverty and creating jobs, both of which are extremely hard to tackle with continued political...

Creative corporate tax strategy is nothing new. As Congress passes laws and the tax code changes, so does the strategy of how firms choose to declare their revenues and losses and financial flows overall. Many times, in efforts to avoid intended taxes on their profits, corporations will create and use a foreign-based shell company in a tax haven or secrecy jurisdiction. Doing this allows the company to siphon funds away from the eyes of the U.S. government to a company that it fully or partially owns, in a destination like the Cayman Islands, and then later to filter the...