Financial Transparency Coalition

GEORGE TOWN, Cayman Islands - Caribbean and Atlantic offshore finance centers are hitting back against attempts to portray them as shady tax havens and say world leaders are making them scapegoats for the global downturn.

I’ve never worn a pair of crampons. I’ve never wielded an ice axe. And I’ve definitely never been snow camping. However, my favorite climber, who scales mountains weekly, has given me a rather intimate knowledge of the—completely outrageous—sport of mountaineering. And if for that reason alone, I can say I am preeminently qualified to declare that mountaineering is exactly like international politics. Well, minus the whole “risking your life” part. Mountaintops provide a convenient symbol for anything from achievement to power. So it doesn’t come as a surprise that the meeting of the world’s...

It's a big week for international affairs with the UN General Assembly meetings going on today, and the G20 summit happening Thursday and Friday. While New York and the UN meetings (cough, cough, will Obama run into Ahmadinejad?, cough) have dominated coverage over the past few days, from our point of view, what comes out of the G20 Summit in Pittsburgh is much more important. In April, the G20 leaders announced the "the era of banking secrecy is over" and vowed to crack down on tax evaders. In July, the G8 stated the need...

Today, following the conclusion of a two day conference titled “Increasing Transparency in Global Finance: A Development Imperative,” the Task Force on Financial Integrity and Economic Development issued the following statement to the members of the G-20:

Today the Task Force on Financial Integrity and Economic Development concluded a two-day conference which provided an opportunity to examine in-depth the linkage between global illicit financial flows and their adverse impact on development.

The massive flow of illicit money out of developing nations, estimated at some $1 trillion per year, outpaces current levels of...