Financial Transparency Coalition

14 startling statistics from the HSBC money laundering scandal.

The Task Force on Financial Integrity and Economic Development, in partnership with the Centre for Budget and Governance Accountability, will host its first Asia regional conference, Financial Transparency: Challenges and Opportunities for Developing Countries, at the India Habitat Centre in New Delhi on April 3, 2013 According to the latest report by Task Force member Global Financial Integrity, the Asia region lost an average of US$344.4 billion per annum in illicit financial flows from 2001-2010. It accounted for 60.91 percent of the total illicit financial flows from the developing world, with China, Malaysia, the Philippines, and India among the...

Just yesterday the German newspaper Suddeutsche Zeitung published the names of wealthy Germans who are listed as company directors in the well-known tax haven of Panama. An article entitled “Germany’s offshore money and the hacker who helped expose it” by Tim Fernholz at Quartz explains the details and the implications. Among the names were some of the richest German families that include the automaker Porsche, the coffee king Jacobs, and the banker von Fink. While some families claimed they knew nothing, that argument holds no water in a tax haven such as Panama. These names...

Phantom Firms are what enabled Teodorin Obiang, the son of the President of Equatorial Guinea, to launder more than $100 million into the USA. This financed a playboy lifestyle of fast cars, a $30 million mansion, a $38.5 million gulfstream jet, and various pieces of Michael Jackson memorabilia, including a diamond-encrusted glove from the Bad Tour. Meanwhile, back home in the oil-rich west African state, more than 1 in 7 children under the age of five were dying from a preventable disease.