Financial Transparency Coalition

Thanks to an AP report that came out yesterday, we now know of yet another reason shell companies are used to keep information in the shadows, but this one involves a U.S. government agency and a "Cuban Twitter".

Assistant Administrator Eric Postel of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) has sent a letter to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) supporting Section 1504, or the Cardin-Lugar provision, of the Dodd-Frank financial reform bill. The "Publish What You Pay" provision, which has been significantly delayed, requires energy and mining companies registered with the SEC to report payments to foreign governments for the extraction of oil, gas, and minerals on a country-by-country basis.  Commenting on the positive effects of country-by-country reporting, Postel writes:

“Our overarching belief is that the enforcement of the proposed rules contributes towards U.S. Government...

US Senator Richard Lugar (R-IN) wrote a good op-ed for the Center for Global Development's blog where he discusses the need to improve USAID. From the piece:

As a result of USAID’s diminished strength, foreign assistance programs have diffused throughout some two dozen other agencies and government departments, including the Pentagon, and USAID directly manages less than half our foreign assistance spending. Each of these agencies naturally considers itself the lead agency in its sector, provoking competition among agencies rather than coordination and coherence. We don’t really know whether these programs are...