Financial Transparency Coalition

WASHINGTON, DC – Global Financial Integrity (GFI) today applauded the introduction of a bill, which would close several major tax loopholes and curtail abusive tax haven secrecy.

January 3rds’ indictment of three Swiss bankers by a US court on tax evasion charges, shows that robust action against offshore centres can succeed. This underlines the terrible deal the populations of Germany, Britain and Greece will be getting if their governments conclude one sided tax deals, known as Rubik, with the Swiss Government.

According to an upcoming report that estimates the magnitude of illicit money leaving developing countries, the Philippines lost US$142 billion between 2000 and 2009. The amount of illicit money that left the economy puts the Philippines in the top 15 countries in outflows during the period. The report, titled Illicit Financial Flows from Developing Countries Over the Decade ending 2009, will be published by Washington, DC-based research group Global Financial Integrity on December 15.

In November of this year, more than 30,000 people, most of them from China, donated about $1.4 million to one man. The donations flowed in all shapes and sizes—wrapped around fruit and thrown into his lawn, folded into paper airplanes, and one even wired in from the German government’s human rights commissioner. The man wasn’t a spiritual leader. He wasn’t ill and he wasn’t going to donate any of it to charity. In fact, he deposited nearly the entire sum into a government account—as a guarantee on his tax evasion charges. The man—not a leader or a humanitarian—is an...