Financial Transparency Coalition

Last week the massive “Offshore Leaks” investigation by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists reported the uncovering of the beneficial owners of thousands of offshore companies. Among the owners of offshore shell companies disclosed so far are several senior politicians and their close families in various countries.

Yesterday, the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) released an article explaining how they explore the hidden world of shell companies. After a three year long investigation, ICIJ’s director, Gerard Ryle, obtained information about offshore companies that included over 2.5 million files. These files contained information surrounding shell companies, nominee directors, and shareholders for over 122,000 shell companies. ICIJ found that most offshore companies were staffed by nominee directors, or people who sell their name to be listed as part of the company. ICIJ also found that the people setting up offshore companies were mostly...

The bail out of the troubled banking sector in Cyprus has taken on serious political overtones as the crisis deepens. During the past few weeks Cyprus has been accused of failing to combat money laundering and fraud and that Russian oligarchs seek refuge for their money in this “tax haven” country.

If there is a one sentence argument that we forward here at the Task Force, it is this: financial opacity, of all kinds, is a root cause of global poverty. Media reports sometimes fail to make this connection and sometimes tinker around the edges of it, but rarely make the link as directly as Hakima Abbas' excellent op-ed for Al-Jazeera.