Financial Transparency Coalition

Last weekend the international body that sets global anti-money laundering rules, the Financial Action Task Force (FATF), announced its new 8 year mandate. This document sets the international framework for the fight to tackle financial crime.

Felix Salmon, always someone with an interesting take on issues, takes a look at Wal-Mart's ethics policy. Given what came out in the New York Times this weekend about Wal-Mart's alleged $24 million bribery and cover-up scandal, you might expect Wal-Mart to have a toothless and empty ethics policy for high-level employees. The reality appears to be different. As Felix Salmon explains, an employee named Julie Roehm, senior enough to handle the search for a company to handle a billion dollar account, was fired for allowing that company to buy her dinner.

Over the weekend, the New York Times alleged that Wal-Mart deliberately hid investigations into bribery practices at the company’s largest foreign subsidiary, Wal-Mart de Mexico. Wal-Mart is Mexico’s largest private sector employer with currently 209,000 employees. Allegedly there is a paper trail that includes hundreds of suspect payments worth more 24 million USD in total.

Switzerland has just signed a ‘Rubik’ deal with Austria which protects banks secrecy in return for an anonymous tax being returned to Austria. This is similar to the ruinous Rubik deals made with Britain and Germany. This deal, which must be ratified by both countries’ parliaments, makes public a covert Swiss-Austrian alliance to block EU cooperation against tax dodgers and prevent automatic exchange of tax information between European governments.