Financial Transparency Coalition

The New Year is a great time for resolutions. Of course most of these resolutions are made on a personal basis. But resolutions can also be made on a national and international level. So in that spirit, here are five resolutions from the FTC and some of our Coalition members. These reforms and priorities, if

LONDON and WASHINGTON, DC – HSBC and Goldman Sachs are among the key western bankers for Colonel Gaddafi’s regime, a 2010 document leaked to Global Witness appears to show. The document details the whereabouts of state oil revenues. However the Libyan people could not know where it was invested or how much it was, because banks have no obligation to disclose state assets they hold. Global Witness is now calling for new laws requiring banks and investment funds to disclose all state funds that they manage.

LONDON – An international financial-crime watchdog was urged not to relax its stance on monitoring political officials in light of the desperate scramble to freeze the assets of recently deposed leaders in the Middle East and North Africa.

The Senate subcommittee on investigations held their hearing today to highlight the problem of US law and money laundering activities from foreign officials. They also released a report, which can be downloaded here. I wrote about the hearing yesterday, so I'd like to make a general comment about the report. Reading through each of the case studies, a theme emerges. At various points in each study, certain public and private individuals and institutions identified the unlawful or suspect nature of the financial transactions taking place in front of them. Often, they acted to close a bank account, notify authorities,...