Financial Transparency Coalition

Global Financial Integrity has been warning about illicit financial flows (IFFs) out of The People's Republic of China for years. These outflows have ranged from an annual US$169 billion in 2000 to US$344 billion in 2008. Dev Kar, Lead Economist for GFI, notes trade mispricing, which is the practice of underpricing exports or overpricing imports in order to shift illegally capital abroad, is “the major channel for the transfer of illicit capital from China.” The country is also, by far, the largest transmitter of illicit financial flows...

In Treasure Islands I briefly mention Sir John Cowperthwaite, Hong Kong's Financial Sectetary from 1961-1971, who had such stridently anti-government views that he banned the publication of official statistics because they would, he said, attract too much attention from civil servants. Such is the anti-government, anti-society worldview that I have so often encountered offshore. I also quote Jack Blum, a top US criminal investigator, who described Hong Kong as an "anything-goes, no-regulation world . . corporations doing business in China set up Hong Kong companies with secret shareholdings . . today Hong Kong is where most of the corruption in...

In America in the 1920s, during the years of prohibition, bootlegging became a pervasive and widespread problem. Bootlegging, named after the practice of concealing illicit liquor in boot tops, was the illegal traffic in liquor in violation of restrictions on sale and transportation of alcohol. As with drugs, human trafficking, or endangered species, when a government restricts the supply of a good with a demand, a black market emerges. Though there was a generous domestic supply—underground distilleries often made liquor out of corn and of course there was “medical” whiskey prescribed by doctors—many Americans got liquor from...

There’s been a lot of chatter about the yuan lately. Well, honestly there’s been a lot of chatter about the yuan for a lot of years. For over a decade, China pegged the yuan, which is the basic unit of the Chinese currency called the renminbi (yes—confusing), to the U.S. dollar. The Chinese government sets its ideal exchange rate by buying foreign exchange with yuan, thereby increasing the number of yuan per dollars in the global market. This keeps the ratio of yuan to dollars high, which means the exchange rate is artificially low (again—confusing—no...