Financial Transparency Coalition

Insurer Friends Provident today set out terms for a merger with Clive Cowdery's buyout vehicle Resolution. The deal would scupper Resolution's plans to pay a select band of executives 10% of annual profits and base the new company in a tax haven.

DEPENDING on your view of his final destination, Silvio Berlusconi has either a guardian angel or the luck of the devil. Before the G8 summit in L’Aquila, aides portrayed a man staring into the abyss. Rumours were rife of a new compromising batch of photographs showing Italy’s prime minister cavorting with “escorts”. L’Aquila was being hit by aftershocks from the April earthquake that led Mr Berlusconi to move the summit there. Given another tremor of over four points, it would have been cancelled or moved again. There was such a tremor—but two days after the summit. The spicy photographs,...

Toronto Star - Finance Minister Giulio Tremonti introduced a measure yesterday allowing Italians to repatriate funds held abroad, outside the reach of tax authorities, a week after calling on world leaders to adopt new rules against evasion.

GULFPORT, Miss. (AP) - Paul Richard Arceneaux, a resident of Church Point, La., has been sentenced to 46 months in prison for failing to file personal tax returns and corruptly interfering with the due administration of Internal Revenue laws.