Financial Transparency Coalition

BRUSSELS—Weeks after the shocking revelations of wide-spread tax evasion at HSBC’s Swiss branch, a new report from a European Commission expert group on the Automatic Exchange of Financial Information (AEFI) makes it clear that the world can’t afford to exclude developing countries from new anti-tax evasion measures. The expert group set out to address a number of questions around new efforts to clamp down on tax evasion through the automatic exchange of financial information between governments. Composed of business and industry associations, as well as some civil society groups, including the Financial Transparency Coalition (FTC), the panel concluded that...

Do you know who owns the house behind yours? What about the one down the street, or that mansion in the nice part of town? When anonymous companies are involved, you can't just walk up and ring the door bell, which makes it tough to find out who really owns a house or property. We've seen anonymous companies come up in property ownership time after time, from former Ukrainian President Vktor Yanukovych's mansion to Iran's secret ownership of a Manhattan skyscraper. Now, Transparency International has...

A major leak of incriminating HSBC records last week resulted in print and television news coverage around the globe, trended on Twitter for several days and prompted several governments to start long-anticipated investigations. Through its Swiss entity, the British banking juggernaut helped customers from around the world to hide their money for tax evasion or other nefarious purposes without any questions asked. In fact, in several of the ‘scripts’ which accompany the accounts, banking personnel are seen to be very willing to accommodate dubious requests—from allowing cash withdrawals worth millions of dollars to setting up sham legal entities to obscure...

Fresh revelations from the Guardian today, paint an even bleaker picture of HSBC Geneva’s client list. According to the paper, the bank’s customers included those who faced allegations of drug-running, corruption, doping and money laundering. Over twenty years, Global Witness has campaigned to stop a lot of things, from blood diamonds to corrupt dictators, to the money flows that fuel conflict. It appears that HSBC has been playing its part in enabling the money flows that support such activities. In some cases, the Guardian claims to have evidence...