Financial Transparency Coalition

WASHINGTON, DC – Global Financial Integrity (GFI) expressed skepticism today that the settlement reached between the United States government and BNP Paribas SA would effectively punish the company for its systematic subversion of U.S. sanctions over a decade-long period or effectively deter similar conduct in the future. U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder announced late on Monday that “between 2004 and 2012, BNP engaged in a complex and pervasive scheme to illegally move billions through the U.S. financial system on behalf of sanctioned entities” in Sudan, Iran, and Cuba, going “to elaborate lengths to conceal...

FTC coordinating member, Tax Justice Network just released June's edition of TaxCast, a monthly podcast covering tax and transparency issues from around the globe. This month's edition covers a wide range of topics, including Thomas Piketty's new book on wealth inequality, Capital in the 21st Century, FIFA's role as a temporary tax haven, and the OECD process towards automatic information exchange.

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.

The Taxcast looks at privatisation and tax: what happens when public assets or services get into private hands? Also: Google’s challenged on its tax affairs by its own shareholders; will Congress block the US administration’s decision to agree to the G20′s global transparency standard? And whatever happened to the UK government’s ‘leadership’ on public registers of the real owners of companies now it turns out it’ll ‘encourage’ but not ‘force’ its overseas territories & Crown dependencies to sign up to the initiative?