Financial Transparency Coalition

A new joint briefing paper by Global Witness, Tax Justice Network, Christian Aid and Global Financial Integrity explains how illicit financial flows out of the developing world is entrenching poverty. These flows include tax evasion, abusive transfer mispricing and the proceeds of corruption. All of these illicit financial flows are facilitated by global financial opacity, both in tax havens and major financial centres. As a result of the financial crisis, which was largely created by global financial opacity, governments are now starting to tackle these issues, particularly through the G20 process. Describing a problem is not enough though: the paper...

David McNair, senior economic justice advisor at Christian Aid and a contributor to this blog, wrote a fantastic essay for politics.co.uk today, in which he highlights the disastrous ramifications posed by tax havens for developing countries and calls for the adoption of country-by-country reporting standards and automatic exchange of tax information. McNair specifically notes that transfer mispricing alone (an illicit technique used by multinational corporations to evade paying taxes) costs developing countries $160 billion per year according to Christian Aid research. Indeed, the problem is likely even larger than this as Global Financial Integrity has published...

In the lead up to the G20 meeting in London this past spring, people from all over Europe descended on the small island of Jersey to raise awareness of its role as a tax haven. Filmmaker Zoe Young has now turned her footage of the event into a great video called "Banking in the Shadows .. a Trip to Jersey." Check it out:

In March 2009, during the run-up to the G-20 Summit in London, activists from all over Europe visited the British Channel Island of Jersey to highlight the role of tax havens in the global crisis.