Financial Transparency Coalition

A couple of weeks ago I presented evidence to the House of Lords Economic Affairs Committee. My evidence will be published shortly. This week Dave Hartnett also gave evidence to that committee, and at least in part on the same subject: employee benefit trusts. As Accountancy Age reports:

told the Lords Economic Affairs Finance Bill Sub-Committee: “Some of the offshore arrangements have been pretty opaque to us for some time.”

Hartnett said: “It is not always possible to use the exchange of information provisions under treaties and other things to expose those.”

The disclosure regime had...

ISTANBUL – State Secretary Ingrid Fiskaa spoke at the Fourth UN Conference on the LDCs, identifying illicit financial flows due to trade mispricing, tax evasion, trafficking, the drugs and arms trade, and corruption as one of the structural causes of poverty as well as one of the major threats facing sustainable development, along with climate change, armed conflicts, and a lack of political and economic empowerment for women and girls.

In Treasure Islands I briefly mention Sir John Cowperthwaite, Hong Kong's Financial Sectetary from 1961-1971, who had such stridently anti-government views that he banned the publication of official statistics because they would, he said, attract too much attention from civil servants. Such is the anti-government, anti-society worldview that I have so often encountered offshore. I also quote Jack Blum, a top US criminal investigator, who described Hong Kong as an "anything-goes, no-regulation world . . corporations doing business in China set up Hong Kong companies with secret shareholdings . . today Hong Kong is where most of the corruption in...

Take a look at this article in Foreign Policy magazine, arguing that Goldman Sachs helped create, and profit hugely from, vast speculative markets in grain and other agricultural commodities, causing food prices to rise, with terrible effects. Goldman, it seems, helped turn a commodity derivatives market worth a sleepy $13 billion in 2000 into a half-trillion-plus market inside eight years. It continued:

"Today, bankers and traders sit at the top of the food chain -- the carnivores of the system, devouring everyone and everything below. Near the bottom toils the farmer. . ....