Financial Transparency Coalition

BRUSSELS—A debate was held on transparency and extractive industries in Africa at the European Parliament on 15 September 2010, organised by CIDSE, an international alliance of Catholic development agencies and its partner organisation SECAM, the pan-African bishops’ conference. The debate highlighted how “the lack of transparency is killing the African people,” as stated by Bishop Louis Portella-Mbuyu of Congo-Brazzaville, who for years has fearlessly challenged his government and transnational extractive companies. EU legislation could contribute to recuperating the huge amount of uncollected tax revenue, far surpassing development aid. The European Commission recently reviewed its EU transparency regulation setting up transparency...

The Task Force on Financial Integrity and Economic Development conference in Bergen starting on 28 September also sees a side event on that day when Danish NGO IBIS and a range of its partner launch a new report. That report – entitled ‘Investments for Development: Derailed to Tax Havens: A report on the use of tax havens by Development Finance Institutions’ – has been written by UK based chartered accountant Richard Murphy (me), the director of Tax Research UK, a member organisation of the Co-ordinating Committee. The report, which is sponsored by IBIS, NCA, CRBM, Eurodad, Forum Syd...

The High Level Plenary meeting on the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) will gather in the UN headquarters in New York from 20 to 22 September with a view to assess and accelerate progress towards the achievement of the MDGs. Prospects for such progress look gloomy since all MDGs are currently off-track. Heads of State and Government will need to move a step forwards and adopt ambitious commitments in order to meet the 2015 deadline. However, according to sources involved in the negotiation of the summit’s final outcome, this agreement is more likely to be a new compilation of abstract...

On the International Accounting Standards Board’s (IASB’s) website, many CSOs including Eurodad have contributed to the IASB Discussion Paper on extractive activities, arguing in favor of a comprehensive country by country reporting standard for the extractive industries, a standard currently being reviewed. There are also contributions from other stakeholders that are openly opposed to such a standard. Interestingly, the World Bank also made a very assertive contribution, which strongly supports a country by country reporting standard in the extractive sector. World Bank strongly backs PWYP Proposals on country by country reporting The entire submission from the World Bank...