Financial Transparency Coalition

G20 leaders meeting in Seoul last week issued a lengthy communiqué accompanied by an annex fleshing out the “Seoul development consensus for shared growth.” The recognition that “there is no ‘one-size-fits-all’ formula for development success and that developing countries must take the lead in designing and implementing development strategies” is a welcome one. However, the G20 call for “inclusive and sustainable growth” fails to provide concrete measures to ensure that poor people in poor countries reap the benefits of economic growth. The text fails to provide a specific plan to combat tax evasion by multinational companies and to...

Panel to Address the Immediate Civil Society Response to the G20 Seoul Summit Outcome BANGKOK, THAILAND – Several representatives from the Task Force on Financial Integrity & Economic Development will appear on a panel Saturday at the 14th International Anti-Corruption Conference (IACC). The four day gathering of world leaders, academics, civil society representatives and private-sector business executives--all addressing the issue of international corruption--comes to a close Saturday evening in Bangkok. Task Force representatives François Valérian of Transparency International (TI), Raymond Baker of Global Financial Integrity (GFI), and Robert Palmer of Global Witness will join a few other representatives of...

Leaders from the world's largest economies - the G20 - will meet tomorrow and Friday in Seoul, South Korea to discuss the future of our international financial system. They have an unprecedented opportunity to institute changes to create a transparent global financial system that is open, accountable, fair and beneficial for all. As you probably know, developing countries are losing $1 trillion every year due to crime, government corruption, and tax evasion. These illicit monetary outflows are roughly ten times the amount of aid money going into developing countries for poverty alleviation and economic development. Click...

Oxfam International has released a new report calling on the G20 to make the connection between secrecy jurisdictions and the harm they do to developing countries. Section 5 of the report states:

All countries should be able to generate their own income by promoting fair taxation. Yet currently, many countries are constrained in their attempts to raise resources domestically or to apply appropriate tariffs because of problems in the international system. At the G20 London Summit in 2009, leaders promised to stand together against tax evasion and avoidance. The G20 should honour its commitments to tackle the tax havens that...