Financial Transparency Coalition

WASHINGTON, DC – Global Financial Integrity’s Legal Counsel and Director of Government Affairs, Heather Lowe, will deliver remarks at the Brazilian Council of Economic and Social Development’s International Seminar on Fiscal Justice on Wednesday, August 10, 2011. Ms. Lowe’s remarks will be part of the seminar’s fiscal policy, productivity and competitiveness panel.

We are delighted to see this from Brazil's respected Instituto de Estudos Socioeconômicos (INESC,) which has launched a Brazilian (Portuguese-language) campaign, as part of our global End Tax Haven Secrecy (ETHS) initiative. The new site, Fim aos Paraísos Fiscais, is supported by a wide range of organisations and the launch got good media coverage in Brazil. Take a look at these reports, for example:

WASHINGTON, DC – Global Financial Integrity's Director of Government Affairs and Legal Counsel, Heather Lowe, will participate in a high-level meeting of governments and civil society at the U.S. Department of State on Tuesday, July 12, at which U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and Brazilian Foreign Minister Antonio Patriota will launch the Open Government Partnership (OGP). The Open Government Partnership is a new, multilateral initiative that aims to secure concrete commitments from governments to promote transparency, empower citizens, fight corruption, and harness new technologies to strengthen governance.

Yesterday afternoon I got a phone call from a private banking insider – somebody who knows the industry intimately – who had objected to some things we have blogged recently. One was yesterday's Bahamas blog; the other was a blog last month entitled Brazil gets tough on global pirate bankers. That picked up a Bloomberg story looking at the arrest of a Brazilian private banker, Alexandre Caiado, who got arrested for apparently selling tax evasion services, and who seemed mystified as to why he had been targeted. Our blog expressed approval that...