Financial Transparency Coalition

Twenty besuited men and women shuffle and blink around a large conference table at 9 am in the heart of the City of London, with almost panoramic views from their fourth floor room. To the unknowing eye this might seem like the start of yet another corporate board meeting. Yet these people hold power not only over the future of a company, but the lives of literally hundreds of millions of people living in poverty around the world. This is the International Accounting Standards Board’s (IASB) October meeting, and the first item on the agenda is its ‘extractive activities’ project....

THE ECONOMIST—CONGRESSMEN working late into the summer nights to overhaul America’s system of financial regulation were surprised when Bono started lobbying them. Yet the rocker-cum-campaigner helped to insert a far-reaching change into the legislation they were drafting. It has nothing directly to do with America’s financial mess, but it will push forward the fight against corruption in the developing world, a cause which has made some much-needed progress recently.

Venezuela Lost Over US$33 Billion in Illicit Financial Outflows in 2008¹

Hugo Chávez again took to his twitter account last week, expressing his support for Ecuadorian President Rafael Correa in the midst of an uprising by disgruntled police officers. While a firm fan of new social media, Mr. Chávez tends to take a dim view of the more traditional sort. Since his election to the presidency in 1998, he has sought to muffle opposition, with state dominance of the media at the heart of his ‘Bolivarian Revolution’. Invariably a government seeking to control the...

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...