Financial Transparency Coalition

During the last century there have been many successes in women’s’ rights movements, but there remains a lot of work to be done in accomplishing gender equality. In the book Half the Sky: Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women Worldwide, authors Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn retell an experience had by Bill Gates during a speaking engagement in Saudi Arabia.

Criminals, especially drug traffickers, may have laundered around $1.6 trillion, or 2.7 per cent of global GDP, in 2009, according to a new report by UNODC. This figure is consistent with the 2 to 5 per cent range previously established by the International Monetary Fund to estimate the scale of money-laundering. Less than 1 per cent of global illicit financial flows is currently being seized and frozen, according to the report Estimating illicit financial flows resulting from drug trafficking and other transnational organized crime. "Tracking the flows of illicit funds generated by drug trafficking and organized crime and analysing how...

UNODC conducted a study on transnational organized crime (TOC) in the fishing industry which was presented in April 2011 during the meeting of the Commission of Crime Prevention and Criminal Justice (CCPCJ). CCPCJ is the governing body of UNODC and guides the activities of the UN in the field of crime prevention and criminal justice. It takes action through resolutions and decisions and adopted in April 2011 a resolution on TOC committed at sea.

Developing countries should have a voice in the discussion on international taxation, writes David McNair of Christian Aid Sitting in New York's Harvard Club surrounded by tax lawyers is not one of the places you expect to find yourself when you sign up to work for an NGO. But there we were, surrounded by taxidermy, listening to a live pianist and discussing the ins and outs of negotiating tax treaties. The world of international taxation, despite affecting millions, is controlled by a small community of people. I have yet to meet a member of this group that is anything but decent,...