Financial Transparency Coalition

I, like many in the tax justice arena, was very dubious when the OECD set up the Global Forum on Transparency and Exchange of Information for Tax Purposes to undertake peer reviews of the operation of tax information exchange by participating states in the aftermath of the financial crisis and the rush to sign tax information exchange agreements (TIEAs). TIEAs are deeply flawed and the OECD designed and promoted them. The OECD was also remarkably cagey about this whole process: civil society was excluded from most involvement, far too many tax havens appeared to get positions of influence over it, the...

John Christensen, founder of the Tax Justice Network, a Task Force member, was profiled by the Guardian on Thursday.  Bibi van der Zee writes about Christensen’s decades-long experience fighting tax evasion, talking about the impacts these illicit flows have not only on the United Kingdom, but on the developing  world as well: “ax avoidance is

In a piece titled Dirty Money: Why does the international banking system make it so easy for corruption to flourish?, the People & Power series on Al Jazeera reports on kleptocrats, grand scale corruption, and the ease of channelling dirty money through the secrecy mechanisms of the global financial system, Again, let's drive the point home here, we're talking secrecy - we are not disputing rights to due privacy - we are talking the kind of secrecy that allows criminals and tax cheats to profit with impunity, and to lead privileged...

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...