Global Financial Integrity
Official Statement from GFI
WASHINGTON, DC – This time last year the German government was pursuing a campaign to obtain information on 900 of its citizens whose names appeared on a list of secret accounts at Liechtenstein’s LGT bank. Meanwhile, presidential hopeful and then-Senator Barack Obama was pledging to crackdown on tax havens and tax evaders if elected president. The world economy was still in one piece and the Dow was above 10,000.
Tom Cardamone
Just before tax day, here is a depressing number: $356 billion. That is the Congressional Budget Office’s new calculation for how much the financial bailout will cost taxpayers, nearly twice the prior estimate.
Who won’t be helping foot the TARP bill? Tax evaders – but they might not get away with it for long.
Corinna Gilfillan
Global Financial Integrity
Joint News Release from Global Financial Integrity and Global Witness
WASHINGTON, DC – Every year developing countries lose as much as $1 trillion due to illicit financial practices such as government corruption, tax evasion, and criminal activity. Today’s pledge from the G20 to increase funding for the IMF and for the developing world are laudable, but these efforts must also address illicit capital flight which remains the greatest impediment to economic development and poverty alleviation.
Global Financial Integrity
Not the Beginning of the End but, Perhaps, the End of the Beginning
WASHINGTON, DC – Contrary to UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown’s statement today that provisions in the G20 Communiqué denote the “start of the end” of tax havens, Global Financial Integrity (GFI) believes the Action Plan agreed to in London today “is more likely just the end of the beginning” of the effort to curtail the activities of jurisdictions that hide financial transactions behind a veil of secrecy.
Global Financial Integrity
WASHINGTON, DC – Global Financial Integrity (GFI) submitted a statement to the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Ways and Means today on critical measures needed to ensure success in Congressional efforts to curtail abuse of tax havens. The statement, submitted for the hearing held today on “Banking Secrecy and Wealthy American Taxpayers,” recommends provisions set forward in the the Stop Tax Haven Abuse Act and Incorporation Transparency Act, both sponsored by Senator Carl Levin and introduced earlier this month.
Global Financial Integrity
WASHINGTON, DC – Global Financial Integrity (GFI) sent Congressional leadership a letter today signed by nearly 30 public interest groups affirming support for legislation that would combat offshore secrecy jurisdictions (Stop Tax Haven Abuse Act) and applauding Congressional action on the problem of tax haven abuse. Called the “Stop Tax Haven Abuse Act” the Levin bill would, among other benefits, give the Treasury Department “authority to take special measures against foreign jurisdictions and financial institutions that impede U.S. tax enforcement.” An estimated $100 billion in US taxes are lost each year due to the abuse of tax havens.
Increasing transparency has become an uncertain element in the laundry list of reforms, regulations, agreements, and actions expected to be discussed when the G20 meets this week. Of the original three solutions proposed to be addressed by the G20 process: stimulus, regulation, and transparency, it is the first two: stimulus and regulation, which have emerged as dominant themes for Thursday’s meeting. This is a critical misstep as transparency represents the most reasonable and effective means for strengthening and revitalizing the global financial system.
The communiqué following the November 15th meeting of the G20 in Washington was bold and comprehensive, with “strengthening transparency and accountability” well argued and placed ahead of “enhancing sound regulation.” But transparency did not appear in the elements paper preceding the April 2nd meeting in London. Nor did it appear in U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner’s statement following the March 14th finance ministers meeting in Horsham. And it appeared only glancingly—“transparency of exposures to off-balance sheet vehicles”—in the general communiqué following that meeting.
WASHINGTON, DC – Global Financial Integrity Director Raymond Baker released the following statement ahead of the upcoming G20 summit in London.
