Financial Transparency Coalition

Despite earning millions from economic activity in Malawi, one of the world’s poorest countries, a single Australian mining company managed to legally avoid paying taxes to the tune of US$43 million over a six year period. That’s enough for almost 500,000 HIV/AIDS treatments.

Lately, we've had quite a few reasons to get outraged as global citizens, especially when looking at the financial system, which seems all too well rigged in favor of a small, wealthy elite. We've learned of secret tax deals undoubtedly concocted in ominously tall office buildings between some of the worlds biggest companies and a tax haven; and we've also learned of billions of dollars that were being held by a Swiss bank by the world's wealthiest, amid claims that the bank was helping many of these people...

The lux leaks saga moved up a couple of gears last week. First of all, a large number of MEPs broke ranks with their leadership to publicly back a European Parliament committee of enquiry into the so-called ‘sweetheart deals’ that Luxembourg concluded with hundreds of multinational companies to minimise their tax bill. The Parliament’s political decision-making body, the Conference of Presidents, has yet to formally approve the enquiry but the genie seems to be well and truly out of the bottle now, even if there are reports that EPP deputies are being put under pressure to withdraw their signatures.  The enquiry...

We’ve been following the review of the European Anti-Money Laundering rules (AMLD) closely and reported on this fascinating policy-making process before. One of our key campaigns, the need for more transparency around those that own and control companies—known as beneficial ownership disclosure—is among the most important changes that are up for consideration. With so-called trilogue negotiations (behind closed-door negotiations between European parliamentarians and diplomats), this reform is entering a crucial phase. Unfortunately, it doesn’t seem that the different sides of the negotiating table speak the same language when transparency is concerned. A quick recap: in March, the European Parliament...