July 16, 2009
Monique Perry Danziger, +1 202 293 0740 ext. 222
WASHINGTON, DC – Global Financial Integrity (GFI) is calling on the UK Government to withdraw a report on illicit financial flows prepared by the Oxford Centre for Business Taxation from its Department for International Development (DFID) Web site due to extensive factual errors, omissions, and erroneous conclusions present in the document.
“Global Financial Integrity and its colleague organizations have been exhaustive and diligent in efforts to produce unimpeachable reports based on the most reliable data available analyzed in accordance with internationally recognized methods of economic analysis,” said GFI director Raymond Baker. “We have been in contact with DFID about the mistakes and mischaracterizations in the report, which they commissioned, and regret that we’ve had to pursue the problem to this level.”
GFI, Tax Justice Network, Tax Research LLP, and academic Simon Pak submitted a detailed letter to DFID outlining specific instances of erroneous statements of fact, analysis and conclusions from the Oxford report earlier this month, requesting that the report be removed from DFID’s website while the errors are addressed. Tax Justice Network has also blogged extensively on this issue.
GFI finds it necessary to use a public forum to renew its request to the UK Government to pull this report from its Web site until the necessary corrections have been made. It is the hope of GFI and its colleague organizations that this unfortunate event will ultimately lead to better understanding of the intricacies of illicit financial flows research.
Read the full text of the letter, outlining some of the more significant errors in the Oxford report, here.
Read Tax Justice Network’s coverage of the issue here.