Financial Transparency Coalition

Civil Society Experts Call on Delaware to Create Public Registry of Beneficial Ownership Information

WASHINGTON, DC – Global Financial Integrity (GFI) and Global Witness expressed disappointment that the Delaware House of Representatives passed two bills this evening that do little to stop criminals from using Delaware companies to launder their illicit proceeds. The two pieces of legislation are House Bill 327 and House Bill 328, which would establish a chain of people that need to be consulted, in turn, in order to identify a person at a limited liability...

The C20, a global network of civil society organizations, have released finalized versions of the position papers that will guide advocacy efforts ahead of the G20 summit in Brisbane, Australia. The most noteworthy for our work at the FTC comes within the C20's paper on 'Governance', which incorporates a number of financial transparency issues.

Late last month, during peace negotiations in Cuba, Colombia’s Marxist-Leninist rebel army organization, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (also known as FARC) signed an agreement with the Colombia government to jointly combat illicit drugs. This is a relatively surprising accord, since many analysts believe FARC receives significant funding from this very trade. Estimates place FARC’s proceeds from the cocaine trade in Colombia around $500 to $600 million annually, mainly through a “tax” FARC places on coca farmers and their coordination of the cocaine smuggling networks. Under the agreement last month, however, FARC agreed that it would completely...

The term G7 sounds a little weird. We've been calling it the Group of 8 (G8) since Russia joined in 1998, but now that Russia has been indefinitely suspended, the group is one member short. Undoubtedly, the very issue that stemmed the name change, the crisis in Ukraine, dominated much of the two-day talks, which finished today in Brussels. But just last year, G8 leaders were talking about another important issue, one that, at first glance, might not seem connected to the crisis in Ukraine: transparency of the real owners of companies.