Financial Transparency Coalition

The developing world has long been plagued with poverty, political turmoil, and corruption. This vicious cycle has been extensively researched, combated, and discussed from many different angles, but nothing has been able to completely ‘solve’ it. While it is unrealistic to seek a blanket solution to the issues that keep countries perpetually poor and unstable, one must look at the wider spectrum of developmental issues and ask, “Why do they persist?” Oscar Abello brings to light one huge reason why they do: financial opacity.

“If you don’t know how to fix it, please stop breaking it,” was the press headline when Severn Suzuki addressed heads of states in Rio de Janeiro in 1992. She was twelve years old, at what was then the world’s biggest-ever political gathering. In an impassioned critique of unfettered industrialism, Severn lamented the decline of the natural world, and the many injustices that man has wrought upon it. “I’m fighting for my future,” she said.

Kyrgyzstan is a country that has long been riddled with corruption. Endemic graft and nepotism was a major factor in the 2010 revolution that the country underwent, and attempts by the government to tamp down corruption have been largely unsuccessful since. The country completely disbanded the Finance Police, who used to be their anti-corruption watchdog. In a unique exercise in transparency, Kyrgyzstan will this week be broadcasting the entrance exam for a new anti-corruption agency on live television.

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.