Financial Transparency Coalition

LONDON – Global Witness welcomes today’s recognition by the Financial Services Authority (FSA) that the majority of Britain’s banks are failing to do enough to identify corrupt money from abroad and that it is ‘likely that some banks are handling the proceeds of corruption’.

Teodoro Nguema Obiang has controlled Equatorial Guinea since he executed his uncle in a bloody coup d’état in 1979. Equatorial Guinea is a country in Middle Africa on the coast. It is one of the smallest and wealthiest countries in the continent, in large part because it holds Africa’s largest oil reserves. Yet the wealth is extremely concentrated in the hands of the government and the ruling elite. Over 75% of the population lives below $2 per day, 35% of its citizens do not live past the age of 40, and nearly 60% do not...

LONDON – The G8 has today announced its commitment to introduce new transparency laws that would require oil, gas and mining companies to disclose the payments they make to governments. Such measures would help eradicate the corruption that blights many mineral rich states and lift millions of people in the developing world out of poverty.

LONDON and WASHINGTON, DC – HSBC and Goldman Sachs are among the key western bankers for Colonel Gaddafi’s regime, a 2010 document leaked to Global Witness appears to show. The document details the whereabouts of state oil revenues. However the Libyan people could not know where it was invested or how much it was, because banks have no obligation to disclose state assets they hold. Global Witness is now calling for new laws requiring banks and investment funds to disclose all state funds that they manage.