Financial Transparency Coalition

Lately, we've had quite a few reasons to get outraged as global citizens, especially when looking at the financial system, which seems all too well rigged in favor of a small, wealthy elite. We've learned of secret tax deals undoubtedly concocted in ominously tall office buildings between some of the worlds biggest companies and a tax haven; and we've also learned of billions of dollars that were being held by a Swiss bank by the world's wealthiest, amid claims that the bank was helping many of these people...

BRUSSELS—Weeks after the shocking revelations of wide-spread tax evasion at HSBC’s Swiss branch, a new report from a European Commission expert group on the Automatic Exchange of Financial Information (AEFI) makes it clear that the world can’t afford to exclude developing countries from new anti-tax evasion measures. The expert group set out to address a number of questions around new efforts to clamp down on tax evasion through the automatic exchange of financial information between governments. Composed of business and industry associations, as well as some civil society groups, including the Financial Transparency Coalition (FTC), the panel concluded that...

Jean Claude Juncker, President of the European Commission, has just responded to a letter sent to him by more than 40 leading investigative journalists. The letter urged President Juncker to ensure the creation of public registers of beneficial ownership information as part of the ongoing negotiations of the EU's 4th Anti-Money Laundering Directive. Beneficial ownership information would provide authorities, journalists, and civil society with information on who actually owns or profits from a company. The European Parliament already approved such registers overwhelmingly in March, with a vote of...

Fittingly on International Anti-Corruption Day, more than 40 investigative journalists from all over the world signed a letter urging Jean Claude Juncker, President of the European Commission, and other legislators to finish what the European Parliament started in March: the creation of public registers of company ownership information. The proposed reform, currently being debated under a new anti-money laundering directive, would create registers to collect information on the real, human owner behind every company operating in the EU. Right now, it's all too easy to set up an anonymous company and use it for money laundering,...