Financial Transparency Coalition

When the G20 signed the Convention on Mutual Administrative Assistance in Tax Matters in November 2011, amid great fanfare, the OECD, a club of wealthy countries, set out to promote it as the 'gold standard' of international tax cooperation. As is often the case (see here or here), the OECD's viewpoint is not quite the full story. While the Convention definitely provides various positive things -- most importantly a tacit assertion that automatic information exchange must be part of effective information exchange -- it also includes clear downsides.

The new site Tackle Tax Havens is now live. Aimed at the non-expert, we expect it to become a key tool. Click here. And watch the video.

TJN is delighted that a long term investigation into how Eastern European criminals and politicians have been using secrecy jurisdictions to hide the proceeds from their crimes has been selected as one of the two overall winners of this year's Daniel Pearl Award for cross-border investigative journalism. TJN has been involved in this investigation, along with our colleagues at Global Financial Integrity and Global Witness, and our Financial Secrecy Index, which placed the USA at the top of the ranking, and drew specific attention to how Delaware, Nevada and Wyoming provide offshore secrecy, is also cited in the report.

LONDON – Policy makers are failing to live up to the pledges of the world’s most powerful nations to tackle tax haven secrecy, according to the latest findings of an index that analyses the contribution different jurisdictions make to this global threat.