Financial Transparency Coalition

Moldova somehow lost $1 billion, and no one is quite sure where it went. The small country of Moldova, wedged between Ukraine and Romania, has dealt with a number of struggles over the past few decades, and it remains one of Europe’s poorest countries. Almost 40% of the country’s working age population works abroad, and nearly 30% of the

Since the financial crisis, we have heard a lot about the revenue governments lose to tax avoidance and evasion, but what about the losses resulting from corruption of governments’ procurement processes? Around the world governments spend $9.5 trillion each year on public works, goods and services. It should be no surprise that fraudsters, and the corrupt, take

The final two months of 2014 saw a surge of positive news for civil society whose collaborative and consolidated efforts over recent years to push for greater corporate transparency measures are now seeing the light. Civil society has called for greater light to be shed on the real living people who ultimately own or control companies – the beneficial owners. Current levels of secrecy mean that global detection rates for illicit funds by law enforcement are as low as 1 percent for criminal proceeds.

Fittingly on International Anti-Corruption Day, more than 40 investigative journalists from all over the world signed a letter urging Jean Claude Juncker, President of the European Commission, and other legislators to finish what the European Parliament started in March: the creation of public registers of company ownership information. The proposed reform, currently being debated under a new anti-money laundering directive, would create registers to collect information on the real, human owner behind every company operating in the EU. Right now, it's all too easy to set up an anonymous company and use it for money laundering,...