Financial Transparency Coalition

WASHINGTON – The former general manager of a Sugar Land, Texas-based business was arrested on Nov. 18, 2009, for his alleged role in a conspiracy to bribe Mexican government officials to secure contracts with the Comisión Federal de Electridad (CFE), a Mexican state-owned utility company, announced Lanny A. Breuer, Assistant Attorney General of the Criminal Division; Richard C. Powers, Special Agent-in-Charge of the FBI’s Houston Field Office; and Rodney E. Clarke, Special Agent-in-Charge of the Internal Revenue Service - Criminal Investigation’s (IRS-CI) Houston Field Office. In addition, a Mexican citizen has pleaded guilty for his role in the bribery...

Australia and other developed nations are tired of seeing their tax dollars heading overseas and out of reach, writes Ruth Williams and Ian McIlwraith.

Action by a Swiss judge to order the confiscation of bank accounts held in countries outside Switzerland set a legal precedent that will help in the international fight against corruption, legal experts said.

On May 4, the Obama administration announced a plan to crack down on offshore tax havens, which it said are costing the United States tens of billions of dollars each year. The President’s proposals were primarily aimed at finding ways to increase revenue from wealthy companies and investors who use loopholes in the law and offshore subsidiaries to reduce their US taxes. But the administration is largely missing a far more devastating problem related to offshore finance: money gained from criminal and other illicit sources. With the use of tax havens and other elements of an increasingly complex “shadow”...