Financial Transparency Coalition

New York Times columnist and prize-winning author Tom Friedman is perhaps best known for his arguments for infrastructure—green or otherwise. His columns and books often, perhaps even ad nauseam, compare U.S. infrastructure to China’s, where “a bullet train to Tianjin…takes just 25 minutes to make a 75-mile trip.” Friedman also loves to deride U.S. terminals, like the “faded, cramped” LAX and NYC’s Pennsylvania station where the escalators don’t work. Though I’m not sure rebuilding LAX would solve our problems, I agree with Friedman on principal. I also believe in the vital importance of infrastructure—whether...

The Justice Department is refashioning its unit that prosecutes financial institutions for money laundering and claws back the proceeds of crime, to stanch the flow of money to violent Mexican drug cartels and impound the assets of kleptocrats around the world.

In all public safety efforts, officials must keep one step ahead of their criminal counterparts. The U.S. Military and Intelligence are constantly developing new strategies and weapons to respond to the ever-changing tactics of terrorists. Police forces worldwide persistently apply new technologies to solve crimes and catch criminals. It is the same for financial crimes and anti-money laundering (AML), in particular. In the past few years the Financial Action Task Force (FATF), an intergovernmental organization founded to combat money laundering and terrorist financing, has made progress in several countries worldwide. In the Philippines, for example, the country’s Congress...

I presented the new report I have written for a range of NGOs entitled ‘Investment for Development: Derailed to Tax Havens’ in Bergen last evening. I did so sitting next to Kjell Roland, the Managing Director of NorFund – the Norwegian Development Finance Institution. Kjell said to the audience present he imagined that Norfund could sign up straight away to the Coe of Conduct I have proposed. I hope it does. I hope it leads the way in persuading others to do so.