Financial Transparency Coalition

Little to choose between Frontline, October 18, 2011 Whistle blowers encouraged to stand firm Eyewitness News, October 17, 2011 India Rapidly Expanding Tax Network Agreement Tax News, October 17, 2011 Ghana: Millions of Citizen’s Vanish Zimbabwe Telegraph, October 18, 2011 Plunder boys: Mubarak sons’ $340M stash New York Post, October 18, 2011

1. We, the G‐20 Finance Ministers and Central Bank Governors, met at a time of heightened tensions and significant downside risks for the global economy that need to be addressed decisively to restore confidence, financial stability and growth.

The 2011 Financial Secrecy Index (FSI) focuses on 73 secrecy jurisdictions. These places set up laws and systems which provide legal and financial secrecy to others, elsewhere. The FSI combines two measurements, one qualitative and one quantitative. The qualitative measure looks at a jurisdiction’s laws and regulations, international treaties, and so on, to assess how secretive it is. The assessment is given in the form of a secrecy score: the higher the score, the more secretive the jurisdiction. The second, quantitative, measurement attaches a weighting to take account of the jurisdiction’s size and overall importance to the...

International oil companies such as the U.S. giant Chevron are beginning exploration off of Liberia’s coastline. However, this new research by Global Witness and Liberian Oil and Gas Initiative (LOGI) 1 suggests that while Liberia has come a long way from the devastating set of resource-financed civil wars that claimed the lives of 250,000 people between 1989 and 2003, serious governance problems persist, and the warning signs for the emerging oil sector are stark.