Financial Transparency Coalition

Delaying Release of Final Rules on Extractive Industries Disclosure Law Will Hurt Developing Countries, Could Weaken Enforcement The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) announced in April that the final rules for Section 1504 of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection act could be delayed until sometime between August and December 2011, at the earliest.  Once enacted, Section 1504 would require companies operating in the oil, gas and mining industries (the extractive industries) that have to report to the SEC, which includes—at a minimum—all such companies listed on U.S. stock exchanges, to report payments made to the...

In the wake of Egypt’s revolution that forced President Hosni Mubarak to step down on February 11th, the country’s interim government has been making a lot of changes, including taking action against the former administration. The government imprisoned a host of powerful former statesmen under Mubarak including Gamal and Alaa Mubarak, sons of the former president, all of whom authorities detained for 15 days and questioned about corruption and abuse. Also imprisoned were Ahmed Nazif, the former prime minister; Zakaria Azmi, the president’s right-hand man; and Fathi Sorour, the former speaker of Parliament. In April, Egypt’s...

Robin Hodess, Knowledge & Research Director at Transparency International, Draws the Dots between Financial Transparency and Climate Change This year’s Transparency International Global Corruption Report, launched this week in Dhaka, Bangladesh, tackles corruption and climate change. The message? Without better governance, climate change measures could go awry. The risk is corruption. The result could be lack of progress in the reduction of greenhouses gases, putting the planet at risk. The new TI report collects more than 50 articles on corruption threats that could affect climate governance, such as policy capture, and it highlights the challenges that will arise as large amounts...

Recently we wrote a blog, entitled "Jeffrey Sachs joins the tax justice movement, sort of," after he wrote some superb (but incomplete) things in the Financial Times about the race to the bottom on corporate tax. Well, now he has a new piece on Project Syndicate, to which we have already briefly linked, but which is worth expanding on. It's entitled The Global Economy’s Corporate Crime Wave, and it's excellent, all the way through. We are particularly excited by this section:

"We will need to light the dark corners of international finance, especially tax havens like the Cayman Islands and...