Financial Transparency Coalition

While President Vladimir Putin’s name didn’t make the first round of sanctions issued against Russian officials yesterday, the Obama administration said that his addition might not be far off, according to a recent article in the Associated Press. How this will affect Russian actions in Ukraine remains to be seen, but with President Putin in

In the coming days, Members of the European Parliament (MEPs) will face a clear-cut choice: to move closer to ending financial secrecy, or to stagnate within the current system of opacity. The specific issue at hand is whether corporations should be required to disclose beneficial ownership information, which identifies who actually owns a company. The

The Obama Administration was an early backer of beneficial ownership legislation, which would collect information on the true owners of companies, and make that information available to law enforcement. However, since then, UK Prime Minister David Cameron has begun advocating for more thorough disclosure at the G8 level, including both law enforcement and the public at large.

A shell game is a well-known parlor game in which players try to follow the movement of a ball placed under one of three quickly shuffled shells or cups and then try to correctly guess the shell that covers the ball once they are brought to rest. When the operator of the game is especially skilled, correctly tracking the ball can prove quite difficult. If a skilled and dishonest operator uses sleight of hand to covertly move the ball to one of the shells not identified by a player, the game becomes impossible to win, a veritable “confidence trick used...