Financial Transparency Coalition

Friday's daily news updates from Global Financial Integrity

Senator John Kerry and the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations conducted a hearing yesterday regarding the challenges of illegal ivory trafficking from Africa. While the topic may seem less urgent in times when widespread unemployment, poverty and global economic crisis receive the bulk of officials' attention, Senator Kerry believes that “we never have the right to turn our backs on the values that define us.” Poaching for the purpose of selling illicit ivory is a travesty, and responsible for the deaths of countless elephants every year:

Thursday's daily news updates from Global Financial Integrity

In Brazil, there is an agency known as “the Lion,” whose agents fly around the country in black helicopters, conducting operations such as the “Black Panther” and “Delta.” They aren’t looking for drugs. Or gangs. They’re tax agents. The Lion, dubbed for its official emblem and its ferocious hunt of tax dodgers, uses nearly any tactic conceivable in its pursuit. With a force of about 12,000 agents, the agency monitors tax receipts of millionaires, hunts for smugglers, sizes up mansions from the air, and scrutinizes tax returns. Gary Becker would be proud. Brazil’s approach follows from the classic “economics of crime”...