Financial Transparency Coalition

Anonymous company ownership doesn’t exactly trip off the tongue does it?  Nor is it a phrase that many people have heard of.  But it should be.  Anonymous company ownership is behind much of what is bad in the world. It’s behind the fraudsters who cheat vulnerable people like the young, the old and the sick out of the resources they need to get by in life.  It’s behind the tax dodgers who don’t pay their fair share towards society.  It’s behind the dishonest public officials who use their positions for personal gain, and the corrupt multinationals that bribe their way...

The U.S. Treasury is in the process of taking a big step toward making it harder for corrupt politicians, drug traffickers and terrorists to make use of the U.S. financial system, by forcing banks to know who their customers actually are. This is something we have been advocating for five years. Treasury recently released a proposed rule and is seeking comment until October 3, 2014. There’s info on how to do that here. It’s worth explaining precisely what we think the problem is, and what the rule should look like if it is...

Last November, a former special agent for the Treasury Department, John Cassara, wrote an op-ed for the New York Times with the headline “Delaware, Den of Thieves?” Cassara described how the state of Delaware (along with Wyoming and Nevada) has become “nearly synonymous with underground financing, tax evasion and other bad deeds facilitated by anonymous shell companies”. He told of his frustration as a law enforcement officer trying to get information out of Delaware about the real owners and controllers of companies registered in the state. This week, a debate has started in Delaware about...

A new report out from the McKinsey Global Institute claims that Nigeria could be the next hotspot for economic growth and development. The firm says that, by 2030, the west African nation could become one of the world's leading economies. And it's true; Nigeria has seen an economic surge in recent years, thanks to massive oil exploitation, a burgeoning financial sector, and a huge population. In April, Nigeria even leapfrogged South Africa on its way to becoming Africa's biggest economy. But even with annual GDP growth at 7%, millions of Nigerians suffer...