Financial Transparency Coalition

With financial sector losses being counted in the trillions, it is easy to lose sight of the mere hundreds of billions slushing down the drain of corruption every year. So negotiators meeting in Doha to discuss the six-year-old United Nations Convention against Corruption must make sure the momentum gained by the anti-corruption fight over the past two decades does not become a casualty of the crisis.

The taxman has taken to social networking for the first time to warn people to come clean about offshore bank accounts.

Washington has spent much of this year showing how tough it is on tax cheats. The Justice Department triumphantly declared in August that it had reached a settlement with Swiss banking giant UBS for it to turn over the names of approximately 4,450 American account holders suspected by the IRS of evading taxes. This week, the IRS revealed the formation of a special task force to go after wealthy tax dodgers, and members of Congress introduced a bill to force foreign firms doing business in the U.S. to disclose all its U.S. clients with accounts overseas.

LONDON -- The U.K.'s myriad overseas territories and crown dependencies must improve standards on financial regulation and tax information-sharing and should broaden their tax base or face possible consequences, a U.K. treasury commissioned report said Thursday.