Financial Transparency Coalition

Two weeks ago, the twenty most powerful leaders of the world headed to Cannes, France for the G20 Summit. It was the G20’s sixth meeting in a series of ongoing discussions about the world’s financial markets. While the meeting did not reach any concrete policy decisions on a host of important issues plaguing our financial world, some of the accomplishments of the meeting included a few pointed and poignant statements from some of the world’s most powerful. One of these statements came from Indian Prime Minister Manomohan Singh, who urged the world’s twenty most powerful countries to agree to...

How international pressure is helping to open up Switzerland, but more is needed to make a real dent in international poverty.

We have had good press coverage for yesterday’s UK-Swiss tax deal analysis, which reveals how the UK government’s claims that it will net 4-7 billion pounds in tax revenues are fatally flawed. See, for example: Swiss-U.K. Tax Agreement May Be ‘Revenue-Negative,’ Group Says – Bloomberg Swiss tax deal could end up costing UK – Guardian

Financial Secrecy Index – the G20’s broken promise October 4, 2011. Today we launch our 2011 Financial Secrecy Index, the biggest investigation of global financial secrecy in world history. It combines a secrecy score with a weighting to create a ranking of the countries that most aggressively provide secrecy in global finance. The new FSI, which follows our inaugural index of 60 jurisdictions published in 2009, considers 73 jurisdictions to reveal a world where most of the biggest suppliers of secrecy are either OECD countries, EU members, or their dependencies. Britain plays an especially prominent role. Secrecy is alive and well World...