About Naomi Fowler
Panama Papers: the role of Western secrecy jurisdictions in looting Africa
This blog comes from Johannesburg, South Africa, where investigative journalists from 28 countries are sharing their work at the African Investigative Journalism Conference. One session looked at stories dug out from the Panama Papers leak from offshore law firm Mossack Fonseca and investigations which have revealed a colourful mix of characters involved in looting Africa. TweetShare
Trump wins in a corrupted economy: welcome to #Truxit
So, Donald J Trump has won the US elections. Here’s what we’d have liked to have been able to write today: “The United States will have its first woman president – instead of the first president for years who refused to publish his tax returns; whose business affairs consistently demonstrate an affinity for tax manipulation and financial opacity; whose tax
Read the full article…A Tax Justice Network How-To Guide on solving secrecy risks around Trusts
The Tax Justice Network has today released a new report: The case for registering trusts – and how to do it. Many people would have you believe that solving secrecy risks around trusts is impossibly complicated. Now we show it isn’t. Another objection often raised is that it’s not worth the cost. Well, we think it is. And not only
Read the full article…Dissecting the Cayman Islands Offshore Financial Centre: small place, big money
We welcome this latest research on the under-researched Cayman Islands, an Offshore Financial Centre (OFC) ‘with foreign assets amounting to over 1500 times Cayman’s domestic economy.’ As we so often explain, while Switzerland currently tops our Financial Secrecy Index, if the UK and its Crown Dependencies and Overseas territories were all rolled into one and assessed together, the UK would in
Read the full article…Switzerland in the UN hot seat over impact of its tax policies on women’s rights
Switzerland—ranked number one in the Tax Justice Network’s Financial Secrecy Index —faced tough questions from a U.N. human rights body in Geneva this week over the toll that its tax and financial secrecy policies take on women’s rights across the globe. Prompted by a coalition of Swiss and international human rights and tax justice advocates, the UN Committee mandated to
Read the full article…Trial of whistleblower Rudolf Elmer breaks open Swiss banking secrecy at a new level
Swiss banking whistleblower Rudolf Elmer has done much to pierce the veil of banking secrecy that has protected financial criminal activity for so long. For that he has been imprisoned, victimised, and his family has been harassed. His reputation has been systematically ripped apart in a way that we believe has been intended as a deterrent to other potential whistleblowers. Now
Read the full article…The Netherlands comes out in support of public country-by-country reporting
Here’s some good news. Policy advisor on tax justice and economic inequality at Oxfam Novib, Francis Weyzig writes how the government in the Netherlands has come out in support of public country by country reporting. TweetShare
The Kleptocracy Curse and the threat to global security
This is well worth watching: journalist and author of Author of ‘Fragile Empire‘ and ‘This Is London‘ and Ben Judah presents his report at the Hudson Institute on how kleptocrats and what he calls the ‘global wealth defence industry’ (or the secrecy and tax avoidance/evasion industry) is wreaking havoc on the global economy and represents a serious threat to international
Read the full article…UN Expert backs the Tax Justice Network’s Financial Secrecy Index in the battle to protect human rights
The next United Nations secretary-general Antonio Guterres has a lot on his plate. But when he takes over from Ban Ki-moon to head the United Nations on the 1st of January 2017 one of his priorities must be to eliminate tax havens. TweetShare
Whistleblowers on film…
A new short film was released earlier this year by German broadcaster Deutsche Welle called ‘Whistleblower – Alone against the system’. TweetShare
Yet another “last chance” for Italian tax evaders to comply with the Italian tax code
Old Italian “habits” die hard, says Lecturer in Accounting and Taxation at Nottingham University Business School and member of the BEPS Monitoring Group Tommaso Faccio. As if the voluntary disclosure programme they offered citizens less than two years ago wasn’t bad enough, here comes yet another one, less than two years later… TweetShare
Podcast: Iceland: offshorisation, collapse and recovery. What are the lessons?
In the October 2016 Tax Justice Network podcast: we look at the offshorisation of Iceland’s economy, its collapse and recovery. What are the lessons? Also, Brazil adds Ireland to its tax haven black list and Panama threatens anyone who dares call it a tax haven with a new law…plus more scandal and unique analysis you won’t find anywhere else. Produced
Read the full article…Our October 2016 Spanish language Tax Justice Podcast: Justicia ImPositiva, nuestro podcast de octubre 2016
Welcome to this month’s podcast and radio programme in Spanish! ¡Bienvenidos y bienvenidas a nuestro podcast y programa radiofonica! (abajo en castellano). This month: we travel from the Panama Papers to the Bahamas and the Bahamas Leaks scandal we analyse money laundering in Argentina, a great tax evasion extravaganza we look at the crisis of the private pension system in
Read the full article…Is it ‘smart’ to avoid your taxes? US Americans believe not
US Americans apparently share a fundamental civic commitment to taxpaying. That’s not what you might think from the anti-tax rhetoric that has been a strong feature of Republican politics. Presidential candidate Donald Trump may have avoided paying any federal income taxes for nearly two decades and famously claimed that that makes him ‘smart’. Well, that’s not a sentiment that’s shared
Read the full article…Global tax reform: update on progress and next steps
The Methodist Tax Justice Network, the Global Alliance for Tax Justice and one of our senior advisors Professor Sol Picciotto have just published a very useful up-to-date account of where the OECD and G20 have got to on tax reform, along with a useful explanation of the Unitary Taxation alternatives which you can download here. TweetShare
