Financial Transparency Coalition

LONDON – Bloomberg and Reuters news agencies have reported that the International Monetary Fund has halted its loan programme with the Democratic Republic of Congo because of concerns over transparency in the country's mining sector. While Congo is clearly in desperate need of funds, Global Witness believes that concerns over possible corruption in the country's mining sector were so serious that the IMF was justified in stopping its lending.

Task Force member Global Witness's Rosie Sharp wrote the following op-ed in The Guardian on Monday. She expanded on the argument that she wrote about on this blog earlier this week, about the implications of the Guardian, the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists and the BBC's Panorama programme investigations into the nominee shareholders that make anonymous shell companies possible.

LONDON - The first official analysis of the “Kabul Bank Crisis” of 2010 reveals an urgent need for reform in the international banking system, said Global Witness today. The “Report of the Public Inquiry into the Kabul Bank Crisis”, published today by Afghanistan’s Independent Joint Anti-Corruption Monitoring and Evaluation Committee (MEC) shows how the perpetrators behind the fraud were able to repeatedly bypass the checks and balances of regulators, donors, auditors and international banks, and steal enough money to incur a bailout costing approximately 6 percent of Afghanistan’s GDP.

Investigations carried out by the Guardian and the BBC's Panorama programme into the ease with which anonymous shell companies can be used to move dirty money around the world are on the front page of today’s paper and being broadcast tonight at 20.30 on BBC One. Their findings match those of Global Witness and others.