Financial Transparency Coalition

Cross posted from Transparency International's website. December 9 is International Anti-Corruption Day. It is a day when people around the world raise their voice against the abuse of power for private gain. The Corruption Perceptions Index 2013, in which two-thirds of countries score less than 50, offers a warning that the abuse of power, secret dealings and bribery continue to ravage societies around the world. They will continue to do so as long as corruption pays off for the corrupt. From the business executive who helps a corrupt official hide a bribe in an offshore bank out of authorities' reach, to the...

This post is the first in a three-part series on policy solutions to confront trade mispricing from Mexico and the War on Drugs. It is adapted, with permission, from this feature article originally published by Policy Matters Journal. In July of last year, the U.S. Department of Justice discovered that the banking giant HSBC “willfully failed” to apply money laundering controls to $881 million in drug trafficking proceeds, including those from two major Mexican drug cartels. Specifically, HSBC’s policies allowed high risk and suspicious account holders to open HSBC bank accounts in Mexico. A Senate Subcommittee on Investigations report condemns...

The FACT (Financial Accountability and Corporate Transparency) Coalition today praised Representative Lloyd Doggett (D-TX) and Representative Rosa DeLauro (D-CT) for the introduction of the Sequester Delay and Stop Tax Haven Abuse Act. Among other things, this legislation would close or tighten tax loopholes that have been used by some of the most profitable multinational corporations – Apple, Hewlett-Packard, Microsoft and Nike – to avoid paying their fair share of taxes. Some tax loopholes allow corporations to use complex accounting schemes to make it appear that profits earned in the United States are actually generated in other countries,...

Transparency International’s Corruption Perceptions Index 2013 offers a warning that the abuse of power, secret dealings and bribery continue to ravage societies around the world. More than two thirds of the 177 countries in the 2013 index score below 50, on a scale from 0 (perceived to be highly corrupt) to 100 (perceived to be very clean). “The Corruption Perceptions Index 2013 demonstrates that all countries still face the threat of corruption at all levels of government, from the issuing of local permits to the enforcement of laws and regulations,” said Huguette Labelle, Chair of Transparency International.