Financial Transparency Coalition

Director of Global Financial Integrity Raymond Baker addressed international tax cooperation as a panelist at the informal United Nations panel discussion held yesterday in New York. Mr. Baker participated in the event's second panel on innovative development financing initiatives under development. Philippe Douste-Blazy, Special Adviser to the Secretary-General on Innovative Financing for Development, chaired the day-long event and provided opening and closing remarks. The meeting allowed for informal and interactive discussion of all the issues related to accomplishing the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) by 2015. The first panel focused specifically on mechanisms of innovative development...

On May 4, the Obama administration announced a plan to crack down on offshore tax havens, which it said are costing the United States tens of billions of dollars each year. The President’s proposals were primarily aimed at finding ways to increase revenue from wealthy companies and investors who use loopholes in the law and offshore subsidiaries to reduce their US taxes. But the administration is largely missing a far more devastating problem related to offshore finance: money gained from criminal and other illicit sources. With the use of tax havens and other elements of an increasingly complex “shadow”...

A side event at the World Bank/IMF Meetings in Istanbul

PARIS, Sep 16 (IPS) - Illegal capital flight in the form of corrupt, criminal and illicit commercial proceeds out of developing economies could be as high as one trillion dollars a year.