Financial Transparency Coalition

GENEVA — Swiss authorities on Thursday lifted a 12-year freeze on nearly seven million dollars in assets the late Zairean dictator Mobutu Sese Seko held in Switzerland, allowing their return to his family.

DEPENDING on your view of his final destination, Silvio Berlusconi has either a guardian angel or the luck of the devil. Before the G8 summit in L’Aquila, aides portrayed a man staring into the abyss. Rumours were rife of a new compromising batch of photographs showing Italy’s prime minister cavorting with “escorts”. L’Aquila was being hit by aftershocks from the April earthquake that led Mr Berlusconi to move the summit there. Given another tremor of over four points, it would have been cancelled or moved again. There was such a tremor—but two days after the summit. The spicy photographs,...

The government has filed an action in Miami federal court to shut down a Hialeah tax preparer.

Toronto Star - Finance Minister Giulio Tremonti introduced a measure yesterday allowing Italians to repatriate funds held abroad, outside the reach of tax authorities, a week after calling on world leaders to adopt new rules against evasion.