Financial Transparency Coalition

ISTANBUL, Turkey – A United Nations Development Program (UNDP) commissioned report from Global Financial Integrity (GFI) on illicit financial flows from Least Developed Countries (LDCs) was presented for discussion yesterday at the United Nations IV Conference on Least Developed Countries hosted by the Republic of Turkey.

Not my title: one Carlo Cottarelli, Director of the IMF’s Fiscal Affairs Department, used for a blog on the Huffington Post. He was talking about what the IMF is doing to help developing countries on this issue. He lists a strong commitment by many countries  to strengthen their revenue systems, through both administrative reforms and improved tax policies. And he refers to good governance and avoiding exemptions and preferences plus the need for political will to drive through tough policy changes to build and support firm, even-handed enforcement.  These, he says, are the issues of concern for developing countries. But he makes no mention at all of:

• transfer pricing abuse
• tax havens
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On Wednesday, October 6^th in Washington D.C., the Revenue Watch Index was co-launched by Revenue Watch Institute and Transparency International. This is an important step in the Promoting Revenue Transparency project, an important project advocating, among other things, country-by-country reporting of all extractive corporations, and not only those active on Wall Street. It is good to take a step back and know what this whole project is about. Why are we interested in the extractive industries? When there is money, there is a corruption risk, when there is big money, there is a big corruption risk, and oil...

Global Financial Integrity Director Raymond Baker gives a lecture on the issue of illicit financial flows and the impact they have on development hosted by the U4 Anti-Corruption Resource Centre and the Chr. Michelsen Institute at the the Bergen Resource Centre for International Development.