Financial Transparency Coalition

FTC coordinating member, Tax Justice Network just released June's edition of TaxCast, a monthly podcast covering tax and transparency issues from around the globe. This month's edition covers a wide range of topics, including Thomas Piketty's new book on wealth inequality, Capital in the 21st Century, FIFA's role as a temporary tax haven, and the OECD process towards automatic information exchange.

In his first official act after winning the biggest democratic election in world history, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced the formation of a Special Investigative Team (SIT) to probe illicit financial flows, or ‘black money’ as they are commonly referred to in India.

Global Financial Integrity (GFI), a Washington-based NGO and Coordinating Committee member of the FTC, has released a new report highlighting the drain that illicit financial flows have on countries in the developing world. But rather than look at the entire developing world, the report focused on five specific countries in east Africa: Uganda, Ghana, Mozambique, Kenya, and Tanzania. The report investigates trade mis-invoicing—the act of under or over-valuing goods so that a business can move money into our out of a country undetected—and estimates how much tax revenue these five countries...

The Africa Progress Panel, a group headed by former UN Secretary General Kofi Annan, launched the 2014 report "Grain, Fish, Money" today at an event in London. The report touches on everything from income inequality to illegal fishing activities that are quickly depleting Africa's oceans and gulfs. But no matter what topic was being discussed, a broader theme kept resurfacing: financial transparency.