Financial Transparency Coalition

The report explains illicit capital flight, how it happens, its magnitude and its consequences for development, measures taken so far and measures needed to end it. It also includes a specific chapter on capital flight from Africa and presents illustrative case studies from Kenya, South Africa and Tanzania. These are written by Attiya Waris from Tax Justice Network Africa and by the Budget Working Group of Policy Forum in Tanzania.

Earlier this week, I attended a fascinating event in parliament, called ‘Africa’s Missing Millions’. My quibble that the title should actually be ‘billions’ didn’t deter a standing-room-only crowd gathering to hear Dev Kar from Global Financial Integrity talk about his research into the vast sums of money that flow out of poor countries on a daily basis. Dev estimates that in 2008, $1.26 trillion in illicit money left developing countries.   This is a problem that’s getting worse – with outflows rising 18% each year since 2000 – particularly in Africa, which is rising by 28% a year.  Over...

Last week at the World Social Forum in Dakar, Senegal, the African branch of Task Force coordinating committee member Tax Justice Network, Tax Justice Network - Africa (TJN-Africa), released the African edition of Tax Us If You Can. As Dereje Alemayehu, chair of Tax Justice Network's African Steering Committee, put it in a blog last week from Dakar:

This report is a clarion call to civil society and governments across Africa to stand up against the injustice of those who dodge taxes, and the response from those attending the launch was clear: this is an injustice we can no longer...

So far, 2011 has not been a comfortable year for the tax dodger. One month in and WikiLeaks is preparing to publish the names of thousands of offshore account holders in Switzerland, UK based companies like Vodafone have been criticised for alleged aggressive tax avoidance, and following a high profile corruption scandal, India’s media is hungry to expose the horrors of a system which allows billions of dollars to flow out of the country every year. Best estimates suggest that Africa has lost US$854 billion to illicit outflows of capital in the past three decades – aided and abetted...