August 22nd, 2014
This week the Treasury Department
began assembling administrative options for deterring or preventing U.S. companies from inverting—or reorganizing overseas to avoid paying federal taxes. This move follows on the heels of a strong statement from President Obama who accused inverting firms of "cherry-picking the rules.” As
he put it: "My attitude is I don't care if it's legal, it's wrong.”
Particularly common among pharmaceutical and life-sciences companies, inversions are primarily a means for U.S. companies to
avoid corporate taxes. In an inversion, a smaller foreign company “acquires” a large U.S. firm,
allowing the domestic firm to...
August 20th, 2014
WASHINGTON, DC – As
New York regulators announced that British bank Standard Chartered PLC will pay a fine of $300 million for failing to rectify anti-money laundering deficiencies as required by the bank’s August 2012 settlement with New York regulators, Global Financial Integrity (GFI) warned that the agreement underscored the fact that fines and monitoring are insufficient for deterring illicit activity at international banks.
“As I
noted in August 2012 when the original Standard Chartered settlement was first announced, monitoring and paltry fines are not an effective response in this case,”...
August 14th, 2014
Last week the White House wrapped up the three-day
U.S.-Africa Leaders Summit, which President Obama convened to strengthen and enhance relations between the United States and African nations. One of the stated missions of the Summit was to advance America’s “commitment to Africa’s security, its democratic development, and its people.”
As such, a core promise of the Summit was more American investment in the African continent. Specifically, the Summit set the stage for more than $33 billion in new commitments to support economic growth across Africa. President Obama pledged $7 billion in new financing; U.S. companies announced $14 billion...
