Financial Transparency Coalition

As the deadline for the Millennium Development Goals looms, policy makers worldwide have begun discussing a post-2015 development process to formalize new Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). While targets have been discussed, creating a comprehensive financing framework remains essential to the process.

WASHINGTON, DC – While noting significant progress today in the global effort to curb tax evasion, Global Financial Integrity (GFI) expressed concerns that the OECD/G20 movement toward automatic exchange of financial information was excluding the world’s poorest countries from reaping any benefits while failing to deal with the issue of illicit financial flows in comprehensive manor. 89 countries committed Wednesday to implement automatic exchange of financial information between jurisdictions by the end of 2017 or 2018 at the annual meeting of the Global Forum on Transparency and Exchange of Information for Tax Purposes in Berlin.

On September 24th, tucked away in a quiet conference room in the basement of the UN General Assembly building, an extraordinary conversation took place on the future of global development.  But, despite the gathering of representatives from the OECD, UN, World Bank, USAID and the Mexican, Australian, and Nigerian governments, the event received exactly zero media coverage. Titled “Curbing Illicit Financial Flows for Domestic Resource Mobilization and Sustainable Development in the Post-2015 Era,” the focal point of the two-hour discussion was how the international community could, as the program description put...

WASHINGTON, D.C.—The G20’s recent focus on financial transparency is a welcome development, but instituting bare minimum requirements, or plans that allow for exclusion, simply give illicit flows an opportunity to continue their hazardous drain on the world’s most vulnerable economies. Last Tuesday, the OECD released recommendations on Base Erosion and Profit Shifting (BEPS), which are aimed at cutting down on the ability of corporations to shift profits into tax havens. It’s well intentioned, but the execution leaves much to be desired. “Apparently, transparency now takes place behind closed doors,” said Porter McConnell, Manager of the Financial Transparency Coalition (FTC). “From a...