Financial Transparency Coalition

It’s not hard to imagine a conflict between Israel and Hezbollah quickly spiraling into a full-scale regional war. Lebanon’s Prime Minister, Saad Hariri, has already declared that his government would support the Shiite military organization if a new war broke out with Israel. A recent paper authored by Jeffrey White and published by the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, argues that if war were to come to Israel’s northern boarder it would be “transformational” and “fateful.” White argues the participants would fight the war over extensive portions of Lebanon, Israel, and probably Syria, “featuring large...

Corruption is again dominating the news in India. Long-standing issues, such as broad attempts to avoid taxes, have simmered back to the surface and been joined by new accusations against the wealthy, major companies, and the government.

Nine years after the United States vowed to shut down the money pipeline that finances terrorism, senior Obama administration officials say they believe that many millions of dollars are flowing largely unimpeded to extremist groups worldwide, and they have grown frustrated by frequent resistance from allies in the Middle East, according to secret diplomatic dispatches.

Yesterday afternoon I got a phone call from a private banking insider – somebody who knows the industry intimately – who had objected to some things we have blogged recently. One was yesterday's Bahamas blog; the other was a blog last month entitled Brazil gets tough on global pirate bankers. That picked up a Bloomberg story looking at the arrest of a Brazilian private banker, Alexandre Caiado, who got arrested for apparently selling tax evasion services, and who seemed mystified as to why he had been targeted. Our blog expressed approval that...