Financial Transparency Coalition

WASHINGTON, DC—The United States should press for greater transparency and accountability in the global financial system at the G20 Summit meeting in Seoul, a coalition of civil society organizations said today. The G20 Advocacy Coalition brings together varied organizations - that share the view that increased transparency is essential to promoting economic development, alleviating poverty and realizing enjoyment of economic and social rights.

WASHINGTON, D.C.—The Task Force on Financial Integrity and Economic Development (Task Force) will have spokespersons available to provide commentary and insights related to the 2010 G-20 Seoul Summit November 11th and 12th.

We recently wrote about the U.S. Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act, describing it as a form of (albeit one-way) automatic information exchange, to help the U.S. tax authorities ferret out tax cheats. A new Reuters story (hat tip: Offshore Watch) highlights one of the effects:

Leumi (LUMI.TA), Israel's biggest bank, is requiring U.S. clients to declare their deposits to the Internal Revenue Service, amid heightened scrutiny of offshore accounts by U.S. authorities. The bank is asking its clients to declare that they are not U.S. clients, or to reveal their ...

My sources tell me that:

The European commission has realised that the DTAs would compromise the EU work on automatic exchange of info. Now the Commission has been in direct touch with Germany and UK regarding this issue. Most important is that they are concerned about Switzerland now being a conduit for all black money back to the UK / Germany if assets are regularised…

So they should be. With the fundamentalist free market government of the UK (yes, I mean that fundamentalist comment – those in our ...