Financial Transparency Coalition

In the process to revise Europe's 4th Anti-Money Laundering Directive (AMLD), European Parliament voted overwhelmingly to approve the creation of public registers of information on the real owners of companies, trusts, and other legal entities in the EU. Public registers of the beneficial owners (real owners), would help greatly in the fight against corruption, trafficking, tax evasion, and other types of illicit financial flows that are perpetrated with the help of anonymous companies with hidden ownership. However, the European Parliament's input is only one piece of the puzzle.

Since February of last year, the European Union has made money laundering and terrorist financing a central focus. In reviewing and updating the third Anti-Money Laundering Directive (AMLD), the European Union has tried to target the process by which criminal proceeds and illicit funds are moved throughout the continent and beyond. We’ve been following their progress closely, and have advocated for sensible reform to allow the EU to set the standard on anti-money laundering. But to be the standard-bearer on financial transparency, EU decision-makers must regulate the anonymous legal entities that...

Plenty of column inches have been given over to debating whether or not former Prime Minister of Luxembourg Jean-Claude Juncker will become president of the European Commission in recent weeks. Politically speaking, potatoes don’t come much hotter, but we’re not really interested in that, and as not-for-profit organisations, we are completely non-partisan anyway. Assuming that he does get in, it is going to be really interesting to see how he will support the major strides that Europe has made promoting transparency and accountability in business.

G8 countries have yet to live up to the important commitments they made on tax and transparency at their Northern Ireland summit a year ago.  According to new analysis by Christian Aid, Action Aid, Global Witness and the Financial Transparency Coalition the UK government needs to build on its leadership if there is to be a strong and lasting legacy to the tax commitments made at Lough Erne. At the gathering hosted by David Cameron at Lough Erne on 17^th and 18^th June 2013, G8 leaders declared that they would tackle some of the ways in which rich and poor...