Financial Transparency Coalition

The government today expressed concern over the “unmistakable trend” of private players parking money in overseas tax havens and low tax jurisdictions.

One September 21st of this year, Italian financial police seized $30.18 million from a Vatican Bank account at a Rome branch for possible ties to money laundering. About $26 million of these funds were headed to JP Morgan in Frankfurt and the remainder was going to Banca del Fucino. Later that day investigators announced that the Vatican Bank’s chairman and director general are under investigation for failure to meet Italy’s anti-money laundering laws. On that day in September, I wrote a blog post about the Institute for Works of Religion, known commonly as Vatican Bank, and its...

While the headlines are full of information that governments did not intend to release, European ministers of finance including UK Chancellor George Osborne last week agreed to a draft directive outlining a powerful new basis for the automatic exchange of tax information between jurisdictions – a directive which, if it does what it says on the tin, would be a dramatic step towards the end for European tax havens. This Tuesday 7 December there was a meeting in Brussels of the Economic and Financial Affairs council (EcoFin, effectively Europe’s council of finance ministers). The press release (still provisional)...

The private sector plays an important role in sustainable democratic and economic development. By creating jobs and opportunities, providing necessary goods and services, and thus improving people’s living standards, private enterprise in a market economy offers citizens the ability to prosper independently of state-provided goods and services. That, in turn, gives citizens the necessary leverage to hold their government accountable because public officials rely on citizens for support, not the other way around. An accountable and efficient public sector is still a necessary part of development, though, and governments and private businesses...