Financial Transparency Coalition

Every year the OECD Development Assistance Committee publishes a report on resource flows to fragile states. This year’s report, Fragile States: 2013 Resource flows and trends in a shifting world, provides some fascinating insights into the future of global poverty, particularly among fragile states. Coupled with our understanding of illicit financial flows from developing countries,

The G20 Finance Ministers and Central Bank Governors met in Moscow this weekend, following the release of the OECD's report on Base Erosion and Profit Shifting (BEPS). That report, along with pieces of FTC's agenda money laundering, automatic information exchange and beneficial ownership made it into the communiqué released by the G20 representatives following their summit.

Today the OECD identified 15 policy action points and created a two-year timeline that it hopes will restore trust and fairness in what it concedes has become a flawed and discredited international tax system. The report, Action Plan on Base Erosion and Profit Shifting, recognises what the Financial Transparency Coalition (FTC) has known for years: That the integrity of the current global tax system has been undermined by multinational companies and their tax planners exploiting the boundaries of acceptable tax planning.

This week Edward Snowden, the whistleblower who leaked information about the National Security Agency’s data collection program, may be allowed to leave his temporary station at the Moscow International Airport, where he has been staying since he fled Hong Kong in June. Snowden’s leak has brought the concept of whistleblowing into sharp focus in our headlines lately, including the controversies over the relative benefits and costs of these individuals and programs that support them. As in the case of Snowden, the concept of whistleblowing can be controversial, and it is always painful for the entity or government who is...