Financial Transparency Coalition

In November of this year, more than 30,000 people, most of them from China, donated about $1.4 million to one man. The donations flowed in all shapes and sizes—wrapped around fruit and thrown into his lawn, folded into paper airplanes, and one even wired in from the German government’s human rights commissioner. The man wasn’t a spiritual leader. He wasn’t ill and he wasn’t going to donate any of it to charity. In fact, he deposited nearly the entire sum into a government account—as a guarantee on his tax evasion charges. The man—not a leader or a humanitarian—is an...

Insight: African leader’s son tests U.S. anti-corruption push Reuters, December 2, 2011 Imperative For Values-Based Leadership In Nigeria, Africa Nigeria Masterweb Daily News, December 3, 2011 Public outcry “set to topple banking secrecy” Swiss Info, December 5, 2011 Christian Aid group meets with MP The Watford Observer, December 5, 2011 How multinationals conduct big rip-offs

An upcoming report by Global Financial Integrity finds that Ethiopia, which has a per-capita GDP of just US$365,lost US$11.7 billion to illicit financial outflows between 2000 and 2009. More worrying is that the study shows Ethiopia’s losses due to illicit capital flows are on the rise. In 2009, illicit money leaving the economy totaled US$3.26 billion, which is double the amount in each of the two previous years.

WisdomTree Local Debt ETF And Emerging Markets’ Bearish Short-Term Outlook: Part 1 Seeking Alpha, December 1, 2011 Corruption index 2011 from Transparency International: find out how countries compare DataBlog, December 1, 2011 Global corruption index reflects Arab Spring unrest Reuters, November 30, 2011 Norway’s wise ways on aid The Guardian (blog), December 1, 2011 Shadow