Financial Transparency Coalition

The Tax Justice Network is delighted to announce the creation of a new section on the TJN website, Special Features. This will be a very occasional series of feature articles, involving high quality research and journalism, which will complement our more academic Briefing Papers section, and other technical output that we have been publishing over recent years. For our inaugural special feature we are extremely grateful to William Brittain-Catlin, a corporate investigator and author of “Offshore: the dark side of the global economy.” This is an interview with Caroline Doggart (pictured), an...

The watchdog organization Global Witness released a report this week exposing ties between a number of British High Street bankers and corrupt Nigerian officials. The report detailed the reprehensible actions of Barclays, NatWest, RBS, HSBC and UBS, which for years took money from Nigerian officials. As we are all acutely aware, such corruption fuels poverty, entrenches dishonest politicians, and exacerbates obstructions to development for many countries. I want to be surprised. Really, I do. They just make it so hard for me. Each of those banks has been embroiled in scandal at one point or another in the...

A campaign to anchor bank secrecy in the Swiss constitution has failed after its organisers could not muster enough support to force a referendum.

Venezuela Lost Over US$33 Billion in Illicit Financial Outflows in 2008¹

Hugo Chávez again took to his twitter account last week, expressing his support for Ecuadorian President Rafael Correa in the midst of an uprising by disgruntled police officers. While a firm fan of new social media, Mr. Chávez tends to take a dim view of the more traditional sort. Since his election to the presidency in 1998, he has sought to muffle opposition, with state dominance of the media at the heart of his ‘Bolivarian Revolution’. Invariably a government seeking to control the...