Financial Transparency Coalition

Yesterday, the nation’s top intelligence official, James R. Clapper Jr., briefed Congress on the most important security threats facing our nation. Clapper didn’t bother to hide his disdain for the annual event, calling an open hearing on intelligence matters a “contradiction in terms.” In a more subtle critique, Clapper also noted that it is virtually impossible to “rank—in terms of long-term importance—the numerous, potential threats to U.S. national security.” In that vein, Clapper said it is the “multiplicity and interconnectedness of potential threats—and the actors behind them—that constitute our biggest challenge.” On that critique, I couldn’t agree more. One of...

In the last few years—and particularly since Vladamir Putin retook power—Russia has increasingly retreated to Cold War tendencies. Russia’s relationship with the United States has soured over its ban on American adoptions of Russian children, a clash over its missile defense problem, and USAID’s democracy promotion efforts. This week, in perhaps the most obvious flashback of all, President Putin announced his nation requires an immediate and massive military upgrade by 2016. And the former KGB agent plans to spend $750 billion over the next seven years to accomplish it. Yet Russia’s existential threat is not from the United States. No,...

Voice of America (VOA) has begun an investigation into global corruption, the first segment of which aired this week, featuring the work of Task Force members Global Financial Integrity and Transparency International.

WASHINGTON, DC – According to media reports, the Governor of the Central Bank of Russia stated Wednesday that roughly $50 billion was illegally siphoned out of Russia in 2012, echoing research published last week by Global Financial Integrity (GFI), a Washington, DC-based research and advocacy organization, which estimated that an annual average of $62 billion was illicitly smuggled out of Russia in recent years.