Financial Transparency Coalition

The Tax Justice Network, a coordinating member of the FTC, just released the latest edition of their newsletter, Tax Justice Focus. This edition focuses on the theme of tax justice and human rights, perhaps the fastest-growing area of interest in the rapidly expanding global tax justice community. Click here for the full edition of Tax Justice Focus, the Human Rights edition. You can also access the individual articles below.

Tom Cardamone, Managing Director of Global Financial Integrity, recently published a piece in Reuters on the connections between human rights and tax evasion. He references a recent report Tax Abuses, Poverty, and Human Rights, published by the International Bar Association’s Human Rights Institute (IBAHRI) Task Force on Illicit Financial Flows, Poverty, and Human Rights. The report finds that the evasion of taxes “has considerable negative impacts on the enjoyment of human rights.” The IBAHRI report goes beyond this connection, however. Developed nations, they write, have an "obligation to assess and address the domestic and international impacts of corporate, fiscal and...

The International Corporate Accountability Roundtable (ICAR) has a new report out that looks at customer due diligence rules. Banks are currently required to perform certain kinds of customer due diligence to check for several different categories of things, including corruption risk. The report analyzes the status quo regarding customer due diligence rules, and begins to address whether or not a rules addressing similar processes for human rights concerns would be feasible.

LONDON - Today’s verdict by the Special Court for Sierra Leone that Charles Taylor is guilty of 11 counts of war crimes and crimes against humanity delivers justice for the people of Sierra Leone and marks a momentous step in international efforts to end impunity. It also highlights the crucial role natural resources played in fuelling the country’s conflict, said Global Witness today.