Financial Transparency Coalition

Price That Poor Countries Pay for Illegal Exit of Illicit Capital From Their Economies Business Daily, August 14, 2011 A look at the world’s new corporate tax havens 60 Minutes, August 14, 2011 Special report – The bonds that turned to dust Reuters, August 15, 2011 Inside “secrecy jurisdictions” Reuters, August 15, 2011 Credit Suisse Likely to Settle Criminal Tax Probe, Lawyers Say Bloomberg, August 15, 2011 Fixing arm’s length price Hindu Business Line, August 13, 2011

David McNair of Christian Aid has an article under the first part of the above title in the Guardian today. David is right to draw attention to the toxic nature of a new deal between Germany and Switzerland – but the UK is also set to sign such a deal very soon. I wrote about this in May, saying the following, and nothing has changed since:

The FT reported today that the UK is to shortly sign a new tax deal with Switzerland. As it said:

Britons with billions of pounds hidden in Switzerland will pay tax...

I’m pretty confident you won’t have read it, but this week's edition of Transfer Pricing Week saw Vodafone’s tax director, John Connors, publicly enter the debate regarding Christian Aid’s campaign for country-by-country reporting. For some time now we have been talking with Vodafone about tax and development and trying to convince it that it should get on top of this crucial issue. And Vodafone has acknowledged that we have ‘had some interesting discussions.’ This week, that conversation went public – and this is something we welcome. We are campaigning for transparency after all. Connors said in the article that ‘country-by-country reporting is a little misguided’ suggesting...

India stud farm owner jailed for 'illegal money' freed BBC News, August 12, 2011 Seeking Sunlight: The Stop Tax Haven Abuse Act TrustLaw (Blog), August 11, 2011 Export and import mispricing; the big cloud over dirty cash Business Daily (East Africa), August 12, 2011 Germany has set back the fight against tax evasion The Guardian, August 12, 2011 Italy turns on the 'parasites on society' in tax clampdown Daily Telegraph, August 11, 2011 The best of weeks, the worst of weeks for Switzerland Financial Times, August 12, 2011