Financial Transparency Coalition

Last week the massive “Offshore Leaks” investigation by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists reported the uncovering of the beneficial owners of thousands of offshore companies. Among the owners of offshore shell companies disclosed so far are several senior politicians and their close families in various countries.

Just yesterday the German newspaper Suddeutsche Zeitung published the names of wealthy Germans who are listed as company directors in the well-known tax haven of Panama. An article entitled “Germany’s offshore money and the hacker who helped expose it” by Tim Fernholz at Quartz explains the details and the implications. Among the names were some of the richest German families that include the automaker Porsche, the coffee king Jacobs, and the banker von Fink. While some families claimed they knew nothing, that argument holds no water in a tax haven such as Panama. These names...

Phantom Firms are what enabled Teodorin Obiang, the son of the President of Equatorial Guinea, to launder more than $100 million into the USA. This financed a playboy lifestyle of fast cars, a $30 million mansion, a $38.5 million gulfstream jet, and various pieces of Michael Jackson memorabilia, including a diamond-encrusted glove from the Bad Tour. Meanwhile, back home in the oil-rich west African state, more than 1 in 7 children under the age of five were dying from a preventable disease.

BRUSSELS / LONDON - The European Commission’s new draft legislation for how to crack down on financial crime, published today, misses an opportunity to make it much harder for tax evaders, mobsters, arms dealers and corrupt politicians to use Europe’s financial system to launder their dirty money.