Financial Transparency Coalition

Guinea is the world’s largest producer of the mineral Bauxite, which is the main source of aluminum. Guinea also possesses reserves of hydropower and solar power, and it exports other valuable minerals: it’s the world’s fifth largest producer of iron ore and it also produces gold and diamonds. Historically, however, Guinea has experienced tremendous difficulty in profiting from this potential. Correspondingly, Guinea has high rates of poverty, high inflation, and low levels of tax revenues. According to a joint study by Global Financial Integrity and the African Development Bank, Guinea lost about 10 percent of its GDP...

This weekend, The Economist—building off information discovered by Task Force member Global Witness—released an extensive feature on the operations of the "Queensway syndicate," a corporate partnership centered around the trade of oil from Angola to China.  Through a series of shell companies, family relations, and personal ties dating back to the Cold War, a network of Chinese and Angolan business-people purportedly dominate many African resource markets, generally doing so through illicit means. In order to gain access to valuable mineral resources across the African continent, the syndicate allegedly promised developmental aid, generally in the form of infrastructure development,...

Some very exciting news out of the Task Force conference: Chaikou Yaya Diallo of the Guinea government, announces that he wants to convene a summit of African ministers to discuss the issue of illicit financial flows and the devastating ramifications they have on developing countries. This is how progress happens. Anyway, now we're eagerly looking forward to Senator Carl Levin's address at 7:15pm EDT.