So near and yet so far… Hopes were riding high yesterday that UK parliamentarians might seize the opportunity to take historic action to end decades of financial secrecy in the UK’s Overseas Territories. We blogged about this yesterday highlighting the fact that a lot of ongoing Parliamentary … [Read more...]
Financial Regulation
Trusts – Weapons of Mass Injustice: new Tax Justice Network report
It is a fact that the trust laws of some tax havens openly promote illegality. The reality that some tax havens will not enforce foreign laws (e.g. ensuring non-recognition of foreign laws and judgements that favoured legitimate heirs and former spouses) is even publicly advertised by some offshore … [Read more...]
Beneficial Ownership and disclosure of trusts: challenging the privacy arguments
On July 22nd, 2016 the French supreme constitutional court ruled on a case brought by a US American citizen resident in France who had created a trust, allegedly to distribute her inheritance. She was contesting moves by France to set up a public register of trusts connected to France in an attempt … [Read more...]
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. … [Read more...]
Brexit gets worse as London seeks to wriggle free from UK
Cross-posted from Fools' Gold. We have our own particular reasons for disliking Brexit - the recent decision by the UK to leave the European Union. In a pre-Brexit analysis we quoted Adam Posen, director of the Peterson Institute for International Economics, who articulated what is probably … [Read more...]
HSBC opts to stay in ‘competitive’ London. (It was never going to leave anyway)
From the Fools' Gold blog, yesterday: There's been a lot of talk for a long time about a threat from globe-trotting HSBC to move its headquarters from London to Hong Kong. It seems there's been a resolution of the question for now, of sorts. As Bloomberg puts it: "HSBC Holdings Plc … [Read more...]
The Finance Curse: Britain and the World Economy, new paper
We've pointed to a draft of this before, but here is the final published version, in the British Journal of Politics and International Relations, a paper by two TJNers and Duncan Wigan of the Copenhagen Business School. (It's also available here.) The abstract goes like this: The Global … [Read more...]
Why a ‘competitive’ economy means less competition
From the Fools' Gold site: The 'competitiveness' of a country can be taken to mean many things. Many people, such as Martin Wolf or Paul Krugman, have argued forcefully that it is a meaningless or dangerous concept. On another level it's a question of language: you can make national … [Read more...]
As the murk grows, the UK rows back on money laundering checks
Updated with Cayman-related news. From Global Witness, a new report entitled Banks and Dirty Money: How the financial system enables state looting at a devastating human cost. It's got plenty of detail, but one eye-catcher is their look at the largest penalties given for money-laundering or … [Read more...]
Joseph Stiglitz: Why America (and Britain come to that) are on the wrong side of history
Influential economist Joseph Stiglitz has published an article in the Guardian newspaper in which he argues that the USA (and we would add the UK and other major OECD countries) is systematically blocking attempts by other countries to strengthen global governance. … [Read more...]
The power of corporate propaganda: review of ‘The Mythology of Business’
Why did the vibrant social democratic traditions of Europe and North America collapse so swiftly in the face of the pervasive propaganda of the neoliberal project? … [Read more...]
Justice, interrupted: will bankers get off the hook ever more lightly?
Two Economist blogs in a row: this time we've a fine excuse because their image comes from our TJN Senior Adviser, Jim Henry, who presented this data at the TJN-supported Illicit Financial Journalism Programme in London last week, and gave a preview last February in our Taxcast (see below): "just … [Read more...]
‘National Competitiveness’: a crowbar for corporate and financial interests
This was originally posted yesterday at the new Fools' Gold site, which is dedicated to understanding how nations do or don't 'compete'. The term "UK PLC" -- the 'PLC' bit standing for Public Limited Company -- evokes notions that whole countries behave like corporations. It is routinely trotted … [Read more...]
Tax Justice Research Bulletin 1(3)
By Alex Cobham, TJN's Director of Research March 2015. Welcome to the third Tax Justice Research Bulletin, a monthly series dedicated to tracking the latest developments in policy-relevant research on national and international tax. This issue looks at new papers on the responsibilities … [Read more...]
Small countries, big banks: is Andorra the new Cyprus?
Our quote of the day comes from the introductory paragraph of a Reuters story: "With Andorra now added to the list, how many more examples do we need to see the folly of combining a small country with a large banking system?" That's our quote of the day. The lead angle of the story is one of … [Read more...]
