Financial Transparency Coalition

Last night, 194 non-governmental organizations (NGOs) from the  UNCAC Civil Society Coalition released a statement calling on the G20 Finance Ministers to tackle the issue of illicit financial flows at their meeting in Washington later this month.  The statement essentially mirrors the text of the G20 Transparency Petition – an initiative from Global Financial Integrity to gather 100,000 signatures calling on the G20 to address the serious issue of illicit financial flows by creating transparency in the international financial system.  You can add your list to the petition at www.G20Transparency.com.  Scroll down for the full UNCAC Coalition statement and full list of NGO signatories.

Call for G20 action to tackle illicit financial flows

We, the undersigned civil society organisations, urge the Group of Twenty Countries (G20) to:

• recognise the link between illicit outflows of capital from developing countries, absorption of those resources by tax havens and secrecy jurisdictions, and the adverse impact those flows have on poverty alleviation and economic development;
• call on the Financial Action Task Force to amend its recommendations 33, 34, and VIII to provide that the beneficial ownership of all companies, trusts, foundations and charities be made a matter of public record;
• reiterate the need for all jurisdictions to help recover the proceeds of bribery, embezzlement and other forms of corruption, and in particular to call on states to increase resources to investigate and prosecute corruption cases; to encourage the use of both criminal and non-conviction based asset forfeiture methods, and to provide coordinated, timely and effective mutual legal assistance, as promised by the G8 Justice and Home Affairs Ministerial Declaration of 11 May 2004;
• instruct the International Accounting Standards Board to recommend that all multinational corporations report their income and taxes paid on a country by country basis; and
• call on the OECD to create and promote a single multilateral agreement for effective tax information exchange between all jurisdictions.