Financial Transparency Coalition

WASHINGTON, DC – Nearly 250 prosecutors, civil society representatives and other officials gathered in Washington, DC this week for a World Bank-hosted meeting of the International Corruption Hunters Alliance. Speakers at the three-day event included World Bank President Robert B. Zoellick, United States Senator Patrick Leahy, Transparency International Chair Huguette Labelle, EU MP Eva Joly, ICC Prosecutor General Luis M. Ocampo, Fridtjov Thorkildsen of Norad, and dozens of other notable corruption fighters. Overall the event was a good opportunity to hear what effort the Bank is making to curb bribery, to better understand initiatives underway in...

Recently I wrote a post on illegal logging—a type of illicit financial flow—and the practice’s adverse effects on development. I noted that as with other, more widely understood, types of illicit financial flows, illegal trans-boundary logging can undermine political legitimacy, rob developing countries of tax revenue, and exacerbate conflicts. Moreover this practice can rob developing countries of a resource that—unlike drugs and minerals—has value even as it remains stationary, as 1.2 billion people depend on forests for wood, fuel, fodder and food. One reason deforestation and loss of biodiversity are such alarming problems is that the full costs...

Should the World Bank’s private sector lending arm, the International Finance Corporation (IFC) set a clear policy regulating its investments in companies registered in tax havens? This question led a few weeks ago to one of the most heated discussions ever on the Executive Board of this institution. Last year, European NGOs asked their Executive Directors at the World Bank to set up binding guidelines to ban IFC investments in companies operating through tax havens. In response to pressure by civil society, the World Bank has taken swift action to start up this discussion; however, the Bank has not gone...