Financial Transparency Coalition

It is quite well known by now that secrecy jurisdictions are not merely an atomised grouping of mostly small states exercising their sovereign rights to set their own tax, secrecy and regulatory rules and laws as they please. Nearly all of the small states are, instead, substantially protected and controlled by larger powers, notably OECD countries, and of these the United Kingdom is by far the most important. Moreover, several large OECD countries are secrecy jurisdictions in their own right (the Financial Secrecy Index gives a good idea.) Ronen Palan's History of Tax Havens gives a good...

In the run-up to the review summit for the UN Millennium Development Goals, Bishop Louis Portella-Mbuyu from Congo-Brazzaville, is leading a church MDG advocacy tour to highlight the disastrous impact of illicit flows on his country and others in the continent. He, and others including Eva Joly MEP, will be speaking about these menaces to society at an event at the European Parliament in Brussels next week. We encourage you to participate: details below +++++++ Transparency and Extractive Industries: How to Recuperate Uncollected African Tax Revenues Bishop Louis Portella-Mbuyu (Congo-Brazzaville) International donors, meeting in New York to review the UN Millennium Development Goals...

On Monday, amid much fanfare, Switzerland signed a revised double tax treaty with India, concerning exchange of information between the two jurisdictions (for general background on what tax treaties and TIEAs are, see here.) Recently, we blogged Indian concerns about the OECD's standard of information exchange, and we have written extensively on the OECD standards themselves, calling them woefully inadequate and noting that they are emphtically not, as the OECD likes to assert, the "internationally accepted standard." It may be a sign of the pressures that developing countries are under that...

Following yesterday's blog about the New York State Bar Association, we now have an update from David Spencer. As a reminder, the New York State Bar Association had said that lawyers should not counsel or assist clients in conduct they know to be illegal or fraudulent "in New York or any other jurisdiction." That last part in parenthesis, we noted, is crucial - for it addresses a common offshore loophole - helping someone else commit an illegal act in a foreign jurisdiction may not be illegal in the home jurisdiction. This loophole has allowed tax haven intermediaries to assist foreign...