Financial Transparency Coalition

WASHINGTON, DC – A letter published yesterday by two influential U.S. Congressmen suggests that Wal-Mart de Mexico (Walmex), the Mexican subsidiary of U.S. retailer Wal-Mart Stores Inc., which recently came under fire for possible violations of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, may have been engaged in money laundering and tax evasion in Mexico.

WASHINGTON, DC – In response to news today that British bank Standard Chartered PLC settled money laundering allegations with New York regulators by agreeing to pay $340 million in fines and submitting to monitoring, Heather Lowe, legal counsel and director of Government Affairs at Global Financial Integrity, released the following statement.

WASHINGTON, DC – The allegations levied yesterday by the New York State Department of Financial Services against British banking giant Standard Chartered demonstrate a systemic, widespread pattern of disregard for anti-money laundering policies at one of the world’s biggest banks, according to Global Financial Integrity, a Washington, DC-based research and advocacy organization.

DG TAXUD, the taxation and customs department of the EU civil service, is working on a strategy on tax havens and unfair tax competition to be released in the last quarter of the year. This is an extremely welcome step, as the communication addresses several key issues. It recognises that not only double taxation but also double non-taxation is a problem when working out how to tax cross border wealth and income; proposes the introduction of automatic information exchange at EU level; and explores several concrete measures against non-cooperative tax jurisdictions and aggressive tax planning. However, in many ways...