Financial Transparency Coalition

The Financial Transparency Coalition issues play an important role in the context of global income inequality. By discouraging tax evasion and corruption among the world’s wealthy individuals and corporations, the FTC recommendations could play an important role in alleviating egregious and dangerous income disparity. When we talk about global inequality, we are usually referring to one of two issues: (1) inequality between nations and regions and (2) inequality between individuals. Inequality between nations usually refers to the huge disparities between the average incomes of people in different countries. The other kind of inequality, that between individuals, refers to the overwhelming...

In many ways, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia contains one of the most unique styles of government and political culture in the world. The central institution of the government is the monarchy—headed by King Abdullah. The Holy Qur'an is the constitution of the country and the nation is governed on the basis of Islamic law or Shari’a. The reaches of the king’s power are essentially limited only by Saudi tradition, Shari’a, and consensus among the royal family and religious leaders. Saudi Arabia holds a tight grip on the nation's government, politics, and culture in large part because the country has...

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.