Financial Transparency Coalition

It's a big week for international affairs with the UN General Assembly meetings going on today, and the G20 summit happening Thursday and Friday. While New York and the UN meetings (cough, cough, will Obama run into Ahmadinejad?, cough) have dominated coverage over the past few days, from our point of view, what comes out of the G20 Summit in Pittsburgh is much more important. In April, the G20 leaders announced the "the era of banking secrecy is over" and vowed to crack down on tax evaders. In July, the G8 stated the need...

Bloomberg -- Swiss banks proposed a withholding tax for foreign clients as they bid to fend off attacks on banking secrecy by the U.S., Germany and France.

A few days ago we blogged on an article in Singapore's Straits Times which crowed about how the island-state is benefiting from the crackdown on tax evasion by governments in North America and Europe. Our blog triggered an exchange with a practitioner who disputes our assessment that Singapore provides:

"strict banking secrecy laws, no register of trusts and foundations, neither company accounts nor company ownership details are placed on public record. On the regulatory side, the island-state is not rated by the...