Financial Transparency Coalition

TJN today publishes new research into banks’ and Big 4 accounting firms’ global geographical reach and presence. Using data from our Financial Secrecy Index (FSI) project, our research finds a positive correlation between the number of banks and the Big 4 firms of accountants in a jurisdiction, on the one hand, and the jurisdiction’s degree

According to a recent editorial from The Guardian, the illicit activities that drive capital flight, such as drug trafficking and terrorist financing, are actually supported by legal infrastructure. Namely, the lack of transparency in regions designated as "tax havens" allows for elaborate tax avoidance schemes and money laundering that funds these sorts of activities. As an example, banking company HSBC reportedly held a Cayman Islands subsidiary that "handled some 60,000 accounts," which "drug lords used . . . to fuel their jet-set lives." According to the newspaper, politicians must address the issue of tax haven abuse. In affected countries such...

The Tax Justice Network has blogged repeatedly on the thoroughly toxic and dangerous tax deals that Switzerland has signed with Germany and the UK and others and is seeking to expand as a model to other countries. We have demonstrated on several occasions that the deals - which are supposed to apply withholding taxes on secret assets, in exchange for continued anonymity - are all but worthless, from a technical point of view (that is, they are absolutely riddled with loopholes, and will raise only a fraction of the promised sums; we have sent our detailed analysis to tax...

A group of 41 businesses and nonprofits sent a letter to every member of Congress pressing them to pass legislation that would reveal the beneficial owners of shell companies.