FTC Newsletter – April – June 2014: The stakes are high!

Dear friends,

When compiling our latest newsletter, we realized just how eventful the last three months have been.

From the Indian government’s creation of a task force to investigate offshore accounts to the Queen of England’s speech announcing the UK’s plan to end anonymous companies–our issues are everywhere this spring. Of course, channeling the momentum into concrete policy change is always a challenge.

Right now, we are making our presence felt in international meetings from Arusha to Rome to Bogotá. We are also hard at work putting together evidence to influence policymakers back in their capitals.

The stakes are high:

• A Global Financial Integrity report released in May revealed that in the last decade, more than US$60 billion dollars were moved illegally out of Ghana, Kenya, Mozambique, Tanzania, and Uganda as a result of trade misinvoicing.
• One in every seven FTSE 100 subsidiaries outside of the UK is based in a highly secretive jurisdiction, according to Christian Aid’s new FTSEcrecy report.
• In its report Fuga de Capitales, the Economics and Finance Centre for Argentine Development (CEFID-AR) recently estimated that US$299 billion in assets are held by Argentinians offshore.
• Finally, the IMF just released a report acknoledging the harmful role that tax havens jurisdictions can play in depleting the revenue bases of developing countries.

We know that money moves around the world at the touch of a button, but governments (and sometimes NGOs) are slowed by national borders. Our job as the FTC is to connect civil society groups, experts and governments working to stem the tide of illicit financial flows so that together, we can be greater than the sum of our parts. 

Enjoy our latest newsletter, and please do not hesitate to get in touch with your news.

Sincerely,

Porter McConnell and the Financial Transparency Coalition team