Financial Transparency Coalition

Indian finance minister Pranab Mukherjee called for international pressure to force non-cooperative jurisdictions to share information about the money they hide at an Asian Development Bank Governors’ seminar last week. This comes in the wake of a series of moves by India to crack down on the huge black money flows out of the country. Earlier in the year Mukherjee made similar comments in the build up to a meeting of G20 finance ministers, arguing for an “effective multilateral platform for automatic, spontaneous and requested exchange of information”. India also demonstrated its commitment to financial transparency by joining...

Since his election Russian President Dmitry Medvedev has been talking about corruption. The subject has had prominence in many of his speeches since his campaign in 2008. In September of 2009 he announced a major reform program aiming to tackle rampant corruption in his country, although he didn’t actually detail what the reform program would include. Medvedev has also repeatedly vowed to tackle corruption in the court systems, stating that Russia should do its best to “make the courts become as much as possible independent from the authorities and at the same time to absolutely depend on...

Last month, the Secretary General of the OECD, Angel Gurría, came to Washington, and among his appointments was a public talk at the Center for Global Development (where he is a member of the board of directors). A former finance minister and foreign minister for Mexico, Sr. Gurría was every bit the politician and statesman – smiling, good projection and eye contact, very personable and very optimistic – hardly a negative word was mentioned about himself or the OECD. Secretary General Gurría began his talk with a brief summary of the world economy. He noted that the center of...

A complaint over tax payments by a Glencore subsidiary could prompt the Zambian government to undertake an audit of all mining companies to assess how much tax they owe The contrast between the poverty of most people in Zambia and the natural riches of our country was highlighted this week in an incident that is highly embarrassing for one of the companies profiting from our mineral wealth. The company - Swiss commodities giant Glencore - has just announced its intention to launch itself on to the London Stock Exchange. So it will have been less than happy...