Financial Transparency Coalition

Global Financial Integrity Lead Economist Dev Kar examines the role of illicit financial flows (IFFs) in the Greek debt crisis. IFFs cost Greece an estimated US$160 billion over the last decade.

Greece has been in the news a lot lately and as we all know, it has not been good news. By all accounts, the austerity measures being imposed on the population as a condition...

Global Financial Integrity circulating petition demanding financial transparency

Washington, DC — As the Group of Twenty (G20) finance ministers meets tomorrow in Washington, Global Financial Integrity (GFI) urges leaders to acknowledge the devastating link between illicit financial flows from developing countries, secrecy jurisdictions (tax havens), and global poverty. “Every year the developing world loses as much as $1 trillion to secrecy jurisdictions via government corruption, criminal activity, and commercial tax evasion,” said GFI director Raymond Baker. “This overwhelms official development assistance by a magnitude of 10; curtailing these flows is critical to...

Last night, 194 non-governmental organizations (NGOs) from the UNCAC Civil Society Coalition released a statement calling on the G20 Finance Ministers to tackle the issue of illicit financial flows at their meeting in Washington later this month. The statement essentially mirrors the text of the G20 Transparency Petition - an initiative from Global Financial Integrity to gather 100,000 signatures calling on the G20 to address the serious issue of illicit financial flows by creating transparency in the international financial system. You can add your list to the petition at www.G20Transparency.com. Scroll down...

In January 2010 the German government, in association with the European Commission and the Spanish Ministry of Foreign Affairs, organised a meeting of its International Tax Compact to consider the relationship between tax and development. Abusive tax practices featured high on the agenda. Details of the meeting, including the final communiqué and the papers submitted by participants, who included Jo Marie Griesgraber from our partners, New Rules for Global Finance, and our Director, John Christensen, are available here.