Financial Transparency Coalition

There is just a week to go before the start of the Hidden Money, Hidden Resources conference in Lima, organized by the Financial Transparency Coalition and Latindadd, and the agenda covers a number of topics which are highly relevant to the Americas. The panel I´ve been invited to moderate, for example, will be exploring the links between citizen security, organized crime, corruption and money-laundering. Latin America and the Caribbean as a region has the highest levels of citizen insecurity in the world, and is the only region where criminal violence increased between 2000 and 2010 according to UNDP.

Today, Global Financial Integrity released our newest report, Illicit Financial Flows from Developing Countries Over the Decade Ending 2009. In the report, we found that despite the global financial crisis and subsequent drop in international trade and foreign direct investment, illicit financial flows still approached US$1 trillion out of the developing world. This represents a decline from the US$1.55 trillion we estimated flowed out of the developing world in 2008, but still represents a horrible tragedy for developing countries.

Deposed Peruvian President Alberto Fujimori was both convicted and sentanced to 7.5 years in prison by Peru's Supreme Court on Monday for bribery. From Reuters:

Peru's Supreme Court convicted and sentenced former President Alberto Fujimori on Monday to 7 1/2 years in prison for giving a $15 million bribe to his spy chief, the third time he has been convicted since returning from exile in 2007 to face a raft of charges.

Fujimori, who suffers from heart trouble and will turn 71 this month, told the court he paid off Vladimiro...