Financial Transparency Coalition

Nearly 5 years ago the international community, led by the United States, imposed the first in a line of increasingly harsh economic sanctions on Iran in the hopes of ending the country’s nuclear ambitions. Despite some signs of success, consensus on the effectiveness of the sanctions remains elusive. However, what is becoming clear is that sanctions are contributing to an explosion of corruption and funneling billions of dollars to Iran’s fastest growing group of kleptocrats: the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps. The Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps, or IRGC, is like an amalgam of the Iranian CIA, Marines, Mafia and Fortune 500....

A new strategy review by the Trustees of the International Accounting Standards Board has clarified that its financial reporting standards will focus on the needs of ‘investors and other market participants’. This is a slap in the face for civil society, which has repeatedly made the case for the IASB to properly address the needs

Tom Cardamone, Managing Director of Global Financial Integrity, continues his biweekly series of blog posts with TrustLaw, on efforts to repatriate government funds illicitly transferred overseas by corrupt government officials.  Based on new World Bank and United Nations Office on Drug and Crime data, as well as experiences with past repatriation attempts, he notes “This means, shockingly, that

Here’s an interesting thought experiment. What would happen if you took an organization, gave it huge resources and publicity, required no transparency, and then asked it to self-regulate? A lot of corporations and governments would like to argue you’d get efficiency. As it would turn out… you’d get FIFA. In May of this year, the International Federation of Association Football (In French: Fédération Internationale de Football Association or FIFA), suspended two of its officials: Mohamed bin Hammam of Qatar and Jack Warner of Trinidad and Tobago. These men were accused of attempting to bribe the 25 heads of the Caribbean...