Financial Transparency Coalition

EU Parliament Adopts Oil, Gas Transparency Initiative Wall Street Journal, September 13, 2011 Swiss deals complicate EU tax negotiations Swissinfo, September 14, 2011 NZ tax case risks deterring Australian investment New Zealand Herald, September 14, 2011 50p tax rate 'costing Treasury £500m' The Telegraph, September 14, 2011 Tax Evasion Probe: Swiss Bank Chair Regrets Taking On U.S. Clients Huffington Post, September 14, 2011

Congratulations to Professor Prem Sikka, a senior adviser to the Tax Justice Network, for his extraordinary success on the case of Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI). Information on the investigation into BCCI, that was previously withheld from the public by the UK government, has now been released. Prem has fought a legal battle for five years so that missing information in the "Sandstorm Report" could be made publicly available. The case of BCCI, (referred to by many as "Bank of Crooks and Commerce International"), is possibly the biggest banking fraud in history. BCCI is a story of massive-scale Continue Reading

In college we studied the so-called “resource curse:” the tragic observation that countries well-endowed with natural resources tend to have slower economic growth and poorer development than those without. I remember, very clearly, that we studied this concept as though it were a truism—a common and (mostly) irreversible reality that just was. This theory has, in fact, been demonstrated very strongly in quantitative terms. According to an analysis of developing countries by Jeffrey Sachs and Andrew Warner, the more an economy relies on mineral wealth, the lower its growth rate. Of course, in my classes, we also studied the drivers...

Profits elude bankers to the rich in booming India Reuters, September 13, 2011 Credit Suisse 'says provided customer data to US' AFP, September 11, 2011 HM Revenue & Customs defends tax deal with Switzerland The Guardian, September 12, 2011 U.K. Probe of HSBC Clients Said to Widen Over Swiss Tax Dodge Bloomberg, September 13, 2011 Rich tax dodgers are paying back six times more than two years ago The Telegraph, September 13, 2011