Financial Transparency Coalition

Early this morning in Switzerland, some of the most influential officials in the worldwide soccer body, FIFA, were probably waking up or getting ready for breakfast. What happened next was, most certainly, unannounced and unexpected.

While Brazil is the only member of the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, Indian, China, South Africa) bloc still alive in this year's World Cup, members from all five nations will reconvene on the Brazilian town of Fortaleza, just days after the tournament's conclusion. The 2013 BRICS Summit, held in South Africa, reaffirmed the group's commitment to economic development and stability. Ahead of this year's summit, which will be held July 15-17, the FTC offered a submission to the group on how and why financial transparency issues are vital to BRICS' agenda. You can read the full submission here.

What do you call an entity with huge amounts of money, a monopoly on a hugely popular good, and no transparency or accountability structure whatsoever? The answer is not a corporation or a corrupt dictator. It’s FIFA. FIFA (in French: Fédération Internationale de Football Association) has a long history of bribery, questionable profits, scandals, and shadowy deals. As Tax Justice Network has shown, the organization has created its own “tax bubble,” forcing nations out of tax revenue by negotiating tax exemption from all types of levies, including income and sales taxes. Christian Aid has, for example, shown that in the...

FTC coordinating member, Tax Justice Network just released June's edition of TaxCast, a monthly podcast covering tax and transparency issues from around the globe. This month's edition covers a wide range of topics, including Thomas Piketty's new book on wealth inequality, Capital in the 21st Century, FIFA's role as a temporary tax haven, and the OECD process towards automatic information exchange.