Financial Transparency Coalition

This weekend, The Economist—building off information discovered by Task Force member Global Witness—released an extensive feature on the operations of the "Queensway syndicate," a corporate partnership centered around the trade of oil from Angola to China.  Through a series of shell companies, family relations, and personal ties dating back to the Cold War, a network of Chinese and Angolan business-people purportedly dominate many African resource markets, generally doing so through illicit means. In order to gain access to valuable mineral resources across the African continent, the syndicate allegedly promised developmental aid, generally in the form of infrastructure development,...

An explosion of anti-corruption protests this month saw effigies burnt in India, hundreds protesting in Russia, and mass riots in China. As tensions rise, the focus of the anti-corruption debate has begun to shift. Instead of seeing corruption as hurtful because it destroys the environment, weakens governments, and harms the poor, some governments have begun to see corruption as hurtful because of its economic consequences. A recent Moscow Times article by Anders Aslund incorporates this shift in thinking. Claiming corruption is so pervasive that investments to increase productivity are virtually impossible, Aslund writes: “Russia cannot build public infrastructure because standard...

Reuters recently released the second feature in Shell Games, a series "exploring the extent and impact of corporate secrecy in the United States." The first special report in the series, "A little house of secrets on the Great Plains" dealt with shell companies established in Wyoming, generally recognized as a secrecy jurisdiction, and how some have been used to hide illict assets . The newest report, "China's shortcut to Wall Street" details how the reverse-merger process has allowed many Chinese companies to become publicly traded in the U.S., while bypassing many regulatory controls. The article details the process:

LONDON – The recent publication by the Democratic Republic of Congo of dozens of its oil and mining contracts online shows promising commitment to its recent transparency pledges said Global Witness today. Particularly welcome is the publication in the past fortnight of one of the country’s most controversial deals – the attribution of previously confiscated oil blocks to two previously unknown companies. These are positive signs, but there is a long way to go - the government has still not published several key contracts, and Global Witness is today publishing the major amendment to a multi-billion dollar Chinese deal.