Financial Transparency Coalition

Last month, the Secretary General of the OECD, Angel Gurría, came to Washington, and among his appointments was a public talk at the Center for Global Development (where he is a member of the board of directors). A former finance minister and foreign minister for Mexico, Sr. Gurría was every bit the politician and statesman – smiling, good projection and eye contact, very personable and very optimistic – hardly a negative word was mentioned about himself or the OECD. Secretary General Gurría began his talk with a brief summary of the world economy. He noted that the center of...

The international edition of the Financial Times has a comment by TJN's Nick Shaxson and John Christensen evaluating how far the G-20 countries have progressed towards their stated goal of tackling banking secrecy and tax havens. The title says it all: "Time to black-list the tax haven whitewash." In April 2009 British prime minister Gordon Brown, the then G-20 president, issued the following commitment:

"to take action against non-cooperative jurisdictions, including tax havens. We stand ready to deploy sanctions to protect our public finances and financial systems. The era of banking secrecy is over. We note that the OECD has today published...

Singapore, an Asian financial center attracting billions of dollars in offshore accounts, is working quickly to become more transparent and is on course to be removed by year's end from a list of nations that shield bank-account information.

RIMINI, Italy (MF-Dow Jones)--Italian Economy Minister Giulio Tremonti and Republic of San Marino Economy Minister Gabriele Gatti met Friday to discuss a tax accord as part of an international move to crack down on tax havens.