Financial Transparency Coalition

Terminology is essential to any serious action against secrecy jurisdictions. The term of secrecy jurisdiction is relatively recent and we owe it to Tax Justice Network and others, which have demonstrated the important secrecy component of a certain number of jurisdictions. The term tends to replace “offshore centres”, a more descriptive and a bit misleading expression which does not refer to offshore islands but tries to depict the role of the centre as a financial intermediary in a trade conducted elsewhere, with most assets and most liabilities being invested or held abroad. The advocacy value of the term...

Christian Aid is launching a new phase of its Trace the Tax campaign for greater financial transparency by multinational companies. The charity is asking supporters to help persuade four firms to back its call for accounting reforms which will help poor countries collect more of the tax billions which are rightfully theirs. All four have assets and subsidiaries in developing countries. They are: Vodafone, Unilever, TUI Travel (which owns Thomson and First Choice) and Intercontinental Hotels Group (which owns Holiday Inn). Helen Collinson, Campaigns Manager at Christian Aid said: ‘We are appealing to these companies to support our campaign for greater tax...

Conclusions of the OECD Meeting of the Council at Ministerial Level, 27-28 May 2010

It’s really very strange to note that Jersey Finance have issued a report criticising Christian Aid’s reports on transfer mispricing. There are a number of very good reasons for thinking it so, even before I turn to the deficiencies in the report they have issued. First of all, what, might one ask, has this to do with Jersey? It’s a good question, because it does not feature in those reports Christian Aid have issued. Nor would it seem likely that it should. Christian Aid’s work relates to mispricing of goods, not services. More than 50% of Jersey’s GDP is generated...