Financial Transparency Coalition

Sometimes you need more than words. Let's try graphics instead. Illicit Financial Flows: Explained on Prezi.

Power Outages Plunged Nearly 700 Million People Across India into the Dark this Week. Could Better Governance and a More Transparent Financial System Have Averted This? Sometimes it can be difficult to wrap your mind around an exorbitantly large number like US$462 billion.  Global Financial Integrity's research shows that developing and emerging economies are  losing astronomically large amounts of money to crime, corruption, and tax evasion each year.  Indeed, our November 2010 report on India by GFI's Lead Economist Dev Kar revealed India had lost $462 billion in illicit outflows. This week's massive poweroutages across the subcontinent—plunging half the country, or about...

The Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI)'s victory in Mexico's presidential elections signifies a new challenge for curbing Mexican capital flight. Returning after a 12 year hiatus from office, PRI will govern both a quickly growing democracy and an underground economy that transcends the party's old negotiation strategy. Modern drug traffickers in Mexico's most corrupt regions have more intelligent and larger money laundering operations than those of previous decades, signaling a need for greater transparency in Mexico's financial structure.

There are obvious relationships between illicit financial flows, corruption, and tax evasion and environmental sustainability. For example, shell corporations can be used to mask illegal fishing or poaching. Corruption can enable companies to get around environmental compliance laws. And tax evasion can divert valuable resources away from environmental enforcement. In sum, illicit financial flows are human constructs that supplement and enhance damaging human behavior, contributing both to stagnating economic growth and worsening environmental conditions. But is there another—more direct—way to examine illicit financial flows and the environmental sustainability? The definition of sustainability isn’t as obvious as you’d think. “Sustainable” in its...