Financial Transparency Coalition

Classification is important—in any discipline. Classification of symptoms helps doctors determine the correct treatment for patients. It helps us pick out the right book in a library, settle on the appropriate sentence for a convict, and compare species of plants. For similar reasons, researchers collect countries into groups based on a variety of metrics that define prosperity. These systems allow us to compare gains in development, to better understand how gains in development can be achieved, and determine appropriate aid packages. It isn’t always easy because there isn’t any one parameter that successfully defines wealth or prosperity.

UK Prime Minister David Cameron gave a speech in Lagos, Nigeria, where he encouraged the European Union to adopt "Publish What You Pay" rules for the mining, oil, and gas industries. According to GFI estimates, Nigeria loses over $14 billion each year to illicit financial flows, far more than any other African nation, with its energy sector being by far the most prominent contributor. Task Force member Christian Aid was quick to praise the development, in particular these comments from his speech:

LONDON – Global Witness welcomes today’s recognition by the Financial Services Authority (FSA) that the majority of Britain’s banks are failing to do enough to identify corrupt money from abroad and that it is ‘likely that some banks are handling the proceeds of corruption’.

Pirates are a problem. Every year they cost the world between $7 and $12 billion in ransoms, insurance premiums, security equipment, naval forces, prosecutions, anti-piracy organizations, and economic losses to regional economies. And these economic costs don’t include the human ones, which are also sizeable. Every year seafarers are attacked with automatic gunfire and RPGs, beaten, and held in extended confinement as hostages. Pirates sometimes use these hostages as human shields against naval vessels and often abuse their captives, both physically and psychologically. Paul and Rachel Chandler, a retired British couple who were on the “trip of their lifetime,”...