Financial Transparency Coalition

LONDON – Global Witness has learned that Teodorin Obiang, the notorious son of Equatorial Guinea’s long-ruling dictator, commissioned plans to build a superyacht worth $380 million – almost three times more than his energy-rich country spends annually on health and education programs combined. This news comes amid an increasingly heated debate about how Middle Eastern dictators and their family members have enjoyed luxury lifestyles, as well as stashing their assets in foreign countries.

LONDON – The Publish What You Pay coalition strongly welcomes the announcement by the UK Government that it will push for the implementation of oil, gas and mining transparency laws in the EU. If introduced, such laws would require that companies listed in the EU publish what they pay to governments for the extraction of minerals around the world. This will improve revenue transparency, helping to eradicate the corruption that has blighted some mineral rich states and improve the lives of millions of people in the developing world.

LONDON – The UK government’s decision to back a ‘publish-what-you-pay’ standard for mining and other ‘extractive’ companies across the world is an exciting and welcome move which will challenge corruption in the oil, mining and gas sectors but does not go far enough to tackle the massive damage done by tax dodging and financial secrecy, Christian Aid says today.

PARIS — As governments around the world freeze the assets of former dictators, campaigners and governments from the Task Force on Financial Integrity and Economic Development (Task Force) meet in Paris this Saturday to discuss how to tackle dirty money flows. This is ahead of a high-level meeting of the Financial Action Task Force (FATF), which sets the international anti-money laundering standards.