Financial Transparency Coalition

In April of 2009, after becoming very upset by the evidence there are rivers of ‘black money’ flowing out of India, the president of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), Rajnath Singh, told voters that if they elected his party into office he would, within 100 days, “bring back all the black money stashed in foreign banks and distribute among ‘the common poor people.’” As we know, the BJP did not come to power in India in 2009 so fortunately for Rajnath Singh, his party never needed to prove this monumental task was possible. It’s not, by the way. At the...

Task Force and Global Financial Integrity Director Raymond Baker speaks at an event sponsored by Christian Aid in Manchester. He explains how the shadow financial system works, and how it causes tremendous human tragedy.

Raymond W. Baker, the director of Task Force member Global Financial Integrity, has written a letter to Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner (R - WI) warning him against introducing legislation to weaken the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA). The letter, which has received coverage from The Wall Street Journal and Just Anti-Corruption suggests there will be political ramifications to for the Congressman should he follow through with his promise to introduce legislation to ammend the nation's flagship anti-corruption law. Just Anti-Corruption (subscription required) reports:

On p28 of the UK edition of Treasure Islands, I write: Almost no official estimates of the damage exist. The Brussels-based non-governmental organisation Eurodad has a book called Global Development Finance: Illicit flows Report 2009 which seeks to lay out, over a hundred pages, every comprehensive official estimate of global illicit international financial flows. Every page is blank. It’s a gimmick, but an important and telling gimmick. (Take a look at the picture: if you’re interested, the book’s cover looks like this). Now, for something I wrote yesterday on the TJN blog: