Financial Transparency Coalition

A few weeks ago ten activists, mostly in their twenties, met in the Nag's Head pub in North London and started to discuss protesting against severe austerity measures being implemented by Britain's coalition govermnent. Instead of protesting simply against cuts, they thought it would be more interesting to launch a strike against tax-dodging  multinational corporations. Building on analyses of the UK's so-called Tax Gap, a subject where the Tax Justice Network's Senior Adviser Richard Murphy has been especially influential, the young activists could see this was a clear and coherent alternative to the government's austerity programme. The group called...

Yesterday afternoon I got a phone call from a private banking insider – somebody who knows the industry intimately – who had objected to some things we have blogged recently. One was yesterday's Bahamas blog; the other was a blog last month entitled Brazil gets tough on global pirate bankers. That picked up a Bloomberg story looking at the arrest of a Brazilian private banker, Alexandre Caiado, who got arrested for apparently selling tax evasion services, and who seemed mystified as to why he had been targeted. Our blog expressed approval that...

Take a look at this story in the Guardian, and the associated ActionAid report. As The Guardian summarises it: “The world’s second-largest beer company, SABMiller, is avoiding millions of pounds of tax in India and the African countries where it makes and sells beer by routing profits through a web of tax-haven subsidiaries, according to

Reposted from the TJN blog: Sometimes a picture speaks more clearly than words can. Now, courtesy of something that FT Alphaville has just pointed out, we bring you this: Look at all those jurisdictions inside the black circle. All secrecy jurisdictions, except for France and Germany. Widen the circle a little, and look at the