Financial Transparency Coalition

Though Ireland is the European country headlining this week with words like “DEFAULT” and “CONTAGION” looming overhead, let’s not forget that the flames have not yet been completely doused on Greece. To prevent the country from defaulting on its debt, this May the International Monetary Fund and the European Union promised to provide Greece with a €110 billion rescue package. But in the terms of this agreement, Greece was to meet certain deficit goals: including reducing the budget deficit to 7.6% of GDP (earlier this year the IMF estimated the Greek deficit was 8.6 percent in 2009,...

G20 leaders meeting in Seoul last week issued a lengthy communiqué accompanied by an annex fleshing out the “Seoul development consensus for shared growth.” The recognition that “there is no ‘one-size-fits-all’ formula for development success and that developing countries must take the lead in designing and implementing development strategies” is a welcome one. However, the G20 call for “inclusive and sustainable growth” fails to provide concrete measures to ensure that poor people in poor countries reap the benefits of economic growth. The text fails to provide a specific plan to combat tax evasion by multinational companies and to...

WASHINGTON, DC —“The Drivers and Dynamics of Illicit Financial Flows from India: 1948-2008,” released today from Global Financial Integrity (GFI), estimates that tax evasion, crime, and corruption have removed gross illicit assets from India worth US $462 billion. The report also finds that the faster rates of economic growth since economic reform started in 1991 led to a deterioration of income distribution which led to more illicit flows from the country. Moreover, the report finds that the poor state of governance is reflected in a growing underground economy which in turn has fueled more transfers of illicit capital...

LONDON — Over the past fortnight, Vodafone stores across Britain have been blockaded by pro­testers wielding banners with the slogan “tax dodgers”. Orchestrated with the help of social media, the campaigners focused on a comparison between swingeing welfare cuts in the UK and what they claimed was Vodafone’s £6bn unpaid corporate tax bill – in spite of the figure being dismissed as an “urban myth” by HM Revenue & Customs. “If the rich paid their tax, you wouldn’t need to make a single cut to any essential service,” read one placard.