Financial Transparency Coalition

Last week Ukrainians cast their ballots for a new president. It was the first election for the position since the nation ousted its allegedly-corrupt former President, Viktor Yanukovych. Before he fled to Russia, Yanukovych lived on 340 acres of land on the banks of the river Dnieper in Ukraine. His former home, a five story mansion named Mezhyhiriya, is decorated with marble, crystal, and precious woods. It is difficult to overstate the luxury of this palatial building. Its cedar doors are worth $64,000, the wall...

Task Force member Tax Justice Network and the Centre of Investigative Journalism at City University, London are offering journalists primarily from the developing world training in illicit finance, financial secrecy and asset recovery. Travel and accommodation costs in some cases will be significantly subsidised. Classes will take place from March 19th to March 23rd in London. Instruction will take place in English.

In December of 2011, nearly a year after South Sudan voted overwhelmingly in favor of independence from its northern neighbor, I asked a very important question. Will South Sudan defy the resource curse? The “resource curse” is the tragic phenomenon that countries well-endowed with natural resources tend to have slower economic growth and poorer development than those without. According to an analysis of developing countries by Jeffrey Sachs and Andrew Warner, the more an economy relies on mineral wealth, the lower its growth rate. Countries with significant natural resource endowments also tend to have an increased likelihood of experiencing war...

The G8 have just released an ambitious and comprehensive asset recovery action plan as part of the Deauville Partnership with Arab Countries in Transition. It is timely and necessary to reinforce the momentum behind stolen asset recovery processes. The first step by G8 countries was to freeze the accounts of the authoritarian leaders Mubarak, Ben Aliand Gaddafi after their fall from power last year, based on the allegation that the assets held had been illicitly acquired from state coffers. However, there has been too little progress made in returning those assets.