Financial Transparency Coalition

This blog is a re-run of a Tax Justice Network blog from 2008, and although some of the facts are out of date, the questions it poses remain highly relevant today and should serve as a reminder as to where attention needs to be directed. This one, concerning an arcane determination from the New York State Bar Association, went as follows: "When tax evasion and illicit cross-border flows happen, they invariably involve more than one set of actors. There is a demand side to this (the tax evaders and their like) and the supply side: the intermediaries who help...

The Tax Justice Network has a new resource on Transfer Pricing, which will serve as a basis for an ongoing project on the issue. The resource contains an overview and a number of links to expert papers on the subject, with concise and accessible summaries of each created by TJN. The website link is here. (Soon it will contain a concise summary of the presentations at the recent transfer pricing event mentioned in the recent blog.) Anyone who has suggestions for the resource, or who would like to express interest in participating in the transfer pricing project, should...

From the Tax Justice Blog: François Valérian, the head of private sector programmes at Transparency International (TI) in Berlin, has an excellent article on the Financial Task Force blog taking to task a recent story in the Wall Street Journal entitled Corruption You Can Count On. (We can't find the WSJ story anywhere for now; will bring you a link when we can - though the WSJ isn't alone in making these points, so it's worth addressing.) Valérian is writing mostly about bribery and TJN has had its disagreements in the past with TI over definitions and scope of...

From the Tax Justice Network blog (adding to its web page on the links between secrecy jurisdictions and the latest economic/financial crisis): The IMF has produced a curious new working paper with the exciting title of The (sizable) Role of Rehypothecation in the Shadow Banking System, with a particular look at the role that the United Kingdom has played in this vast, dangerous unregulated market. Please forgive the slightly wonkish nature of this, but rehypothecation is the practice that allows collateral posted by, say, a hedge fund to its prime broker (the investment banks or securities firms that...