Image: Michael Kuhlmann for UNCTAD Over one trillion dollars. That’s the amount of money that Africa is estimated to have lost in illicit financial flows (IFFs) over the past 50 years (Kar and Cartwright-Smith, 2010; Africa Growth Initiative, 2020). The current estimate is an annual amount of around $50-billion, and possibly more – a significant Read more >
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CORRUPTION NEWS
In part 3 of our new mini-series on financial secrecy, we focus on the Corporate Tax Haven Index (CTHI), published by the Tax Justice Network (TJN) – the 2021 edition, released in March, is the second since 2019. Part 1 of the series looked at the definition of and gave information on secrecy jurisdictions and Read more >
CORRUPTION NEWS
The term ‘secrecy jurisdiction’ might, for many, conjure up the image of a fortified bank vault deep underground in a Swiss city, or a tropical island teeming with wealthy individuals and located far away from troublesome laws and regulations. And indeed, the world’s greatest enabler of global financial secrecy is currently the sunny Cayman Islands, Read more >
CORRUPTION NEWS
In our new mini-series we’ll delve into the issue of financial secrecy – what it is, who enables it, how does it affect economies, which are the big culprits, and what role does corruption play? The series is based on two reports released by the Tax Justice Network (TJN) – the biennial Financial Secrecy Index, Read more >
PRESS RELEASES
04 October 2020 Issued by the C19 People’s Coalition. The C-19 People’s Coalition unreservedly supports the spirit and the demands of the national strike of 7 October. The reasons are indisputable. South Africa, even before the Covid-19 crisis, was already becoming poorer. A quarter of our people suffered from extreme poverty. Government presided over one Read more >
OPINIONS
By Sabeehah Motala Illicit financial flows (IFFs) are costing Africa $30-billion to $40-billion per year and have eroded African countries’ tax bases, hampering their abilities to respond effectively to Covid-19 emergency needs. Lockdown, states of emergency, and all the accompanying implications mean that developing states are more vulnerable than ever to the possibility of illicit Read more >
CORRUPTION NEWS
In May 2020 Mauritius, curiously one of the African countries that perform well on the annual Corruption Perceptions Index, was listed by the European Commission (EC) as a high-risk country for money laundering and funding of terrorism. It was joined on the revised EC list by Botswana, Ghana, and Zimbabwe, among others. The former is Read more >
CORRUPTION NEWS
If you were wealthy and corrupt and wanted to hide or disguise your ill-gotten gains, you are spoilt for choice. You could falsify invoices to disguise the true value of money being moved across borders in a trade exchange, or you could mix the dirty money with money from a legitimate company such as a Read more >
CORRUPTION NEWS
Original source: Reuters European Union (EU) finance ministers removed Namibia from the bloc’s blacklist of tax havens on Tuesday after it committed itself to changing its tax rules and practices, the EU said. The Economic and Financial Affairs Council established the list in December 2017, with the overall goal of improving tax good governance globally Read more >