Financial Transparency Coalition

In this Prezi, the final installment of a three-part series, I put illicit financial flows into context around the world.

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.

Eduardo Bohorquez and Deniz Devrim of Transparencia Mexicana, our national chapter in Mexico, recently published an article arguing for the abolishment of the word “petty” in the term “petty bribery”. They point out that petty bribery in fact generates substantial costs to society, both monetary and non-monetary. For example, surveys find that in Mexico households with the minimum income spend 33 per cent of their monthly income on bribes.

Most attention at this week’s G20 summit focused on the euro crisis and the perilous state of the global economy. But the G20’s final communiqué and background papers indicate that financial transparency is integral to its high-level agenda. The communiqué from Mexico highlighted 13 jurisdictions that have failed to meet the required standards of tax information exchange.