Financial Transparency Coalition

When it comes to transparency and development, Asia is home to many paradoxes. China is ready to overtake the United States as the world's largest economy, but also home to rapidly rising income income inequality. Hong Kong, China's Special Administrative Region, is meanwhile the world's fastest growing tax haven. And, as you will see in the presentation below, Asia is also home to alarming levels of endemic corruption and of financial opacity. High income inequality can undermine social cohesion, create barriers to social and economic mobility, and result in increased corruption and cronyism. Meanwhile, illicit financial flows erode...

China has had problems with bribery, corruption, and illicit financial flows for years. In fact illicit outflows from the People’s Republic of Chinahave ranged from an annual US$169 billion in 2000 to US$344 billion in 2008. The country is also, by far, the largest transmitter of illicit financial flows in the developing world. And in case it’s not already obvious, let me clarify that these numbers are unbelievably large. For a point of comparison, the PRC’s stock of total external debt in 2008 was $378 billion, just slightly greater than its total illicit outflows in that year alone. Corruption also...

A new report released by the Leprosy Mission Ireland which criticizes the Millenium Development Goals as favoring rich countries also recognizes the importance of shutting down tax havens as a development imperative. From the Irish Times:

MANY OF the policies adopted by the UN to end global poverty are “unrealistic and unattainable” because they advance the interests of the rich at the expense of the poor, according to a report by Leprosy Mission Ireland.

It analyses the “failures” of the millennium development goals, criticises the way target goals were selected...