Financial Transparency Coalition

The Senate subcommittee on investigations held their hearing today to highlight the problem of US law and money laundering activities from foreign officials. They also released a report, which can be downloaded here. I wrote about the hearing yesterday, so I'd like to make a general comment about the report. Reading through each of the case studies, a theme emerges. At various points in each study, certain public and private individuals and institutions identified the unlawful or suspect nature of the financial transactions taking place in front of them. Often, they acted to close a bank account, notify authorities,...

Yesterday's US Senate Homeland Security Committee hearing on the Incorporation Transparency and Law Enforcement Act, which featured Tax Justice Network-USA Chairman and Global Financial Integrity Advisor Jack Blum, is now available online on the Senate.gov website. Check it out below: Full resources from the hearing can be downloaded from the Senate website here...

We have long pointed to the fact that the United States is, to a very significant degree, a secrecy jurisdiction, not least through dirty practices offered in places such as Delaware. It isn't something that people like to mention in polite company. Now we're very heartened to see the Australian tax office has written an open submission to the US Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs, which includes the following strongly-worded:

"In our opinion, entities established in some states of the USA, for example some US incorporated companies, have some of these same...