Secret Offshore Deals Deprive Africa of Billions in Natural Resource Dollars ICIJ "The Panama Papers show politicians and mining, oil and gas interests benefit from secrecy and dubious multimillion dollar transfers" Staunching tax "haemorrhage" from poorest countries United Nations Radio See … [Read more...]
Secrecy
Will the OECD tax haven blacklist be another whitewash?
Finance Ministers from the G20 countries meet in China on July 23-24 - this weekend. Amid sessions that will focus heavily on Brexit-related issues, there will be an important tax component. At their previous meeting they mandated the OECD to "establish objective criteria . . . to identify … [Read more...]
Some countries “lose” 2/3 of exports to misinvoicing
From UNCTAD, the UN Conference on Trade and Development, via email: "Some commodity dependent developing countries are losing as much as 67% of their exports worth billions of dollars to trade misinvoicing, according to a fresh study by UNCTAD, which for the first time analyses this issue for … [Read more...]
Links Jul 14
African MPs support push against illicit financial flows Tax Justice Network - Africa Illicit financial inflows and low tax revenue bedevil Africa’s development BDlive New Research Shows Transparency Does Not Negatively Affect Business Competitiveness Transparency International … [Read more...]
Links Jul 12
Asian Development Bank Updates Policy In Wake Of Global Tax Developments Uganda: Free Zones Authority to Push for Tax Incentives allAfrica / The Observer (Kampala) See also: Visualising Uganda’s (and others’) tax treaties Martin Hearson's Blog, and our recent blog: Quote of the day – tax … [Read more...]
Luxembourg backing down on supporting tax haven USA
A month ago we wrote an article entitled Now Luxembourg, Switzerland are working to bolster Tax Haven USA. This concerns a global scheme to share banking information, the OECD-led Common Reporting Standard, (CRS, which starts up next year and complements separate schemes and campaigns to see public … [Read more...]
Links Jul 7
Revenue Mobilization in the Developing World: Changes, Challenges and Chances Review of International Political Economy Swiss banking sector seeks to enlist Britain for EU negotiations Reuters France, Luxembourg roll out red carpet for post-Brexit business Yahoo News Panama Papers: the … [Read more...]
New EU Directive on Money Laundering – a curate’s egg
The European Union, amid all the Brexit turmoil, has issued a proposal for a new Directive on money laundering and terrorist financing. Transparency, of course, is at the core of it. The Panama Papers scandal has given new urgency to the task of unmasking the corrupt, the crooks and other financial … [Read more...]
Links Jul 5
Poverty amidst plenty: How Africans are robbed of benefits of mineral wealth Pambazuka News Zambia's New Mining Tax Regime May Fail the Test of Time National Resource Governance Institute Rich landowners are reaping billions from a tax loophole meant to benefit India's poor farmers Bloomberg … [Read more...]
Two new transparency advances, in UK and US
From Global Witness: "Information on who ultimately owns and controls British companies goes live for the first time today." That's good news, amid all the Brexit brouhaha (and idiotic and dangerous plans to privatise the UK's Land Registry.) Meanwhile, the FACT coalition in the United States … [Read more...]
Links Jun 30
LuxLeaks: Luxembourg court condemned for guilty verdicts The Parliament See also: Grand dodgy - The good deeds of the Luxembourg leakers do not go unpunished The Economist, Campaigners condemn punishment of Luxleaks whistleblowers who acted in the public interest Global Alliance for Tax Justice, … [Read more...]
New ranking of how transparent the think tanks are
From Transparify.com, a new report: "We visited think tanks’ websites and looked at the funding and donor information disclosed online, including in online annual reports. Institutions rated with the maximum of five stars are highly transparent about who funds them. Think tanks with four stars are … [Read more...]
Links Jun 28
The Great Trump Tax Mysteries: Is He Hiding Loopholes, Errors, or Something More Serious? Vanity Fair By TJN's @nickshaxson, author of Treasure Islands: Tax Havens and the Men Who Stole the World Join a special "fanzone" in Paris for the match between multinationals and whistleblowers PFJ (In … [Read more...]
Luxembourg on trial as Luxleaks whistleblowers await tomorrow’s verdict
Tomorrow afternoon the "LuxLeaks" trial will end and the two whistleblowers, Antoine Deltour and Raphaël Halet, as well as the journalist Eduard Perrin, will know whether they will be punished or not, for breaking Luxembourg's secrecy regime. They face up to 18 months in jail for exposing lurid … [Read more...]
Kenya tax haven approaching: secrecy to be enforced with prison terms
We have for a while been sounding alarms about the emergence of (yet) another tax haven/secrecy jurisdiction in Kenya. A few months ago we quoted the newspaper African Arguments: “Anti-corruption campaigner John Githongo has warned that in this setting, the NIFC “would be like a financial crime … [Read more...]
