Financial Transparency Coalition

Corruption is a criminal behavior. To contain the harm done to society by the corrupt, we rely on oversight and prosecution. We expect integrity from our leaders, and while the ability to stamp out corruption through prosecution is imperfect, it is demonstrable that few are immune from scrutiny. The headline grabbing investigations of figures like Tom DeLay, Charles Rangel, and Steven Ratner are only the most recent examples. Our response to corruption abroad follows the same reasoning. To foreign leaders we counsel: remove the corrupt from positions of power and prosecute them for their crimes. Yet for every story of...

Auditors Face Fraud Charge Wall Street Journal, December 20, 2010

BAE to admit failure in accounts records Financial Times, December 20, 2010

WikiLeaks cables: Sudanese president 'stashed $9bn in UK banks' The Guardian, December 18, 2010

High street stores hit in day of action over corporate tax avoidance The Observer, December 19, 2010

Germany raises 1.6 bln euros from tax evaders AFP, December 18, 2010

Rock of wages: online gaming keeps Gibraltar's residents at work The Guardian, December 19, 2010

Clegg wants full tax transparency Isle of Man Today, December 20,...

Nicaragua has endured a troubled history. Behind only Haiti, Nicaragua is the poorest nation in the Americas. Half of its population lives in poverty, a fifth in extreme. The county is led by President Daniel Ortega, a leader among the Sandinista, a leftist political that advocated property redistribution while it ruled throughout the 1980s. In many ways, Daniel Ortega is a contradiction. While he is politically aligned with the Sandinista, he also has distanced himself from its Marxist past. Ortega has denounced “U.S. terroristic aggression in Central America,” but ardently supported the Central...

In August 2010, the bodies of 72 immigrants were discovered in Tamaulipas, a state in northeastern Mexico. While nobody knows the sequence of events that led to this massacre, it is well known that Tamaulipas is at the center of a turf war between two powerful drug cartels, the Zetas and the Gulf Cartel. Control of territory and trafficking routes is critical as it enables the cartels to expand their criminal operations to include other moneymaking endeavors like fuel bunkering, prostitution, kidnapping, and even software piracy. Across the Atlantic, a recent report for the Council of Europe...