Get India's Stolen Money Back

Dear india, We are pleased to present our report, "Implied Tax Revenue Loss From Trade Mispricing." This work analyzes tax revenue lost due to one form of trade mispricing, that which arises when transactions are reinvoiced. This occurs when goods leave a country of export under one invoice, then the invoice is redirected to another jurisdiction such as a tax haven where the price is altered, and then the revised invoice is sent to the importing country for clearing and payment purposes. Data on this form of mispricing is obtained from International Monetary Fund Direction of Trade Statistics, which reports annual exports and imports for all pairs of reporting countries. We do not in this study analyze trade mispricing that occurs within the same invoice, and we do not cover trade in services and intangibles, which are not addressed in IMF Direction of Trade Statistics. Each of these phenomenon likewise move considerable sums of tax evading money across borders. Focusin...

Reuters, February 17, 2010 ABU DHABI - An international body fighting money laundering and terrorist financing will publish a blacklist this week of countries which are failing to crack down on financial crime, officials said on Wednesday. The Financial Action Task Force (FATF), comprising governments and regional organizations, will name the nations at the end of a meeting in Abu Dhabi on Thursday, said a senior official of the United Arab Emirates central bank. Publication of the blacklist follows promises by the Group of 20 major economies last year to crack down on the problem, calling on the FATF to identify "uncooperative jurisdictions". Global Witness, an international NGO, said those named in the FATF review may face political and economic pressure to strengthen their laws. "Holes in the global anti-money laundering system continue to allow corrupt politicians, as well as terrorists, nuclear proliferators and organized criminals, access to the funds that the...

The Difficulty of Addressing Governance Issues Underlying Illicit Financial Flows Task Force on Financial Integrity and Economic Development, February 18, 2010 A recent study at Global Financial Integrity (GFI) found that illicit financial flows from developing countries (henceforth emerging markets), which grew around 18 percent per annum since 2002 swelled up to  US$1 trillion in 2006. While the lack of prudent macroeconomic policies, political instability, and governance issues are major drivers of illicit flows, a subsequent study at GFI found that banking secrecy and  lack of regulatory oversight  facilitated the absorption of illicit flows in mainly Western financial institutions. Curtailing illicit flows must therefore involve both emerging market as well as developed countries to address the factors responsible for the generation and absorption of illicit funds. Here we discuss the difficulty of addressing complex governance issues underlying the generation o...

Switzerland will not be able to resist the automatic exchange of tax information indefinitely, the European Union ambassador to Bern has claimed. In an interview published in the Basler Zeitung newspaper, Michael Reiterer rejected outright the withholding tax option put forward by the banks and pro-business parties. "In the long term Switzerland will not be able to resist the European trend towards automatic information exchange," Reiterer said. The ambassador dismissed withholding tax as an outdated concept. "Its goal is to preserve anonymity instead of transparency," he said. Swiss Finance Minister Hans-Rudolf Merz, who was in Luxembourg for an informal meeting of German-speaking finance ministers on Sunday, has however dismissed an automatic exchange of information with tax authorities abroad. A Swiss finance ministry spokeswoman said the atmosphere had been friendly despite recent tensions between Switzerland and Germany over Berlin's decision to pursue a st...

Time Magazine, February 13, 2010 At a critical point in the intense U.S.-Swiss negotiations that took place this past summer to get the names of U.S. taxpayers who were part of a massive tax evasion program, things suddenly took a nasty turn. The U.S. Justice Department, frustrated for decades by Swiss efforts to foil any tampering with its bank secrecy traditions, was pressing its advantage: a giant tax evasion program run by Swiss bank behemoth UBS was exposed in great detail by a company whistleblower, and Uncle Sam was demanding to know the names of all 52,000 U.S. account holders involved. The Justice Department subpoenaed bank documents, and could have threatened to have a U.S. court slap a contempt citation and a scorching daily fine on UBS until it turned the documents over. That's when the Swiss Government drew a bright red line: It announced that it would seize UBS documents so that the bank would not be able to hand them over to the U.S. After intense high-level neg...

WASHINGTON, DC -- Developing countries are losing approximately $100 billion dollars every year due to trade mispricing, according to a new report available today from Global Financial Integrity (GFI). "Every year crime, corruption, and tax evasion drain $1 trillion out of developing countries," said GFI director Raymond Baker.   "This report more closely examines one particular form of financial outflow and shows how illicit financial practices -- in this case trade mispricing -- deprive developing country governments of tax revenue." Report findings include: The estimated range for tax revenue loss due to trade mispricing in developing countries, per year, is between $98 billion and $106 billion; This estimated revenue loss is approximately 4.4 percent of the developing world's total tax revenue; The top five countries with the largest tax revenue loss are: Zimbabwe (21.5%), China (31%), Philippines (30.7%), Nicaragua (27.7%), and Mali (25.1%); Rates of ...

Wall Street Journal, February 7, 2010 Zurich - German officials said they were weighing fresh offers from informants after deciding last week to pay €2.5 million ($3.4 million) for the names of suspected tax evaders in what is rapidly evolving into a broad attack on Switzerland's system of banking secrecy. Over the past week, German officials have launched a tactical and rhetorical assault on Swiss banking, a strategy that appears to be aimed at undermining both Switzerland's tradition of secrecy and its pre-eminence as a tax refuge. In addition to agreeing to purchase the data, a move Switzerland vociferously protested, Germany signaled it would likely share whatever information it secures with other countries. A poster in Zurich protesting Germany's agreement to buy secret Swiss bank data from an unidentified informant shows German Chancellor Angela Merkel and Finance Minister Wolfgang Schäuble. "There's no future for bank secrecy," German Finance Minist...

 GENEVA: The digital revolution is turning into the Achilles heel of Swiss banks, according to security and banking experts quizzed about recent stolen data turning up in the hands of neighbouring countries. CD-ROMs, USB sticks and even mobile phone cameras have become handy options for disgruntled or ambitious staff to copy computer data on thousands of clients when a few years ago a cumbersome paper trail was needed. Swiss banks built much of their reputation around a legal obligation to maintain secrecy on their customers’ banking affairs — criminal cases aside — including from the taxman, whether in Switzerland or abroad. But preventing one-off leaks, which can have much a bigger scope than before, is becoming a conundrum. Banks are “big consumers of information technology” and have to “square the circle” to counter the threat, Gregoire Ribordy, director of network security firm IDQuantique said. Measures are available, such as minimising the extent of information open to cl...

CNN-IBN BIG CATCH: House of senior IAS officer Arvind Joshi was raided on Thursday night. Bhopal: Over Rs 3 crore in cash have been recovered from an IAS couple in Bhopal following raids by the Income Tax Department officials at their residence on Thursday night. Officials also seized details of bank deposits worth Rs 2.25 crore from the house of Arvind Joshi, a senior IAS officer and his wife Tinu Joshi, who is the secretary of Woman and Child Welfare Development in the Madhya Pradesh government. "Stacks of banknotes were recovered in a suitcase. The action comes on the basis of documents found during a similar exercise in 2009 of heavy investments made in an insurance company by these officials," said Director General of Investigations (I-T) for Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh, Brajesh Gupta. Sources say Joshi confessed all the money is from unaccounted sources . There were also simultaneous raids at the houses of retired Bhopal Municipal Corporation commissioner MA Kha...

By DEBORAH BALL   ZURICH—The Swiss government, fending off a public-relations disaster, froze at least $4.6 million held in Swiss bank accounts rather than comply with a court order to return the money to the family of Haiti's former leader, Jean-Claude Duvalier. On Jan. 11, the day before a devastating earthquake struck Haiti, Switzerland's Supreme Court reversed a lower court's decision that would have handed over the money to aid organizations. In 1986, the Haitian government lodged a request to recover the money, charging that Mr. Duvalier stole it from public funds before he was ousted that year. However, Switzerland pursues requests from foreign governments to return cash only when that government is pursuing a criminal investigation of its own as well. In 2002, the Swiss government froze the money in accounts linked to Mr. Duvalier and some of his family members. It continued to freeze the funds untiln 2007, when a Swiss court approved the Swiss govern...

January 20, 2010 Author: Clark Gascoigne Clark Gascoigne is the new media coordinator at the Task Force on Financial Integrity & Economic Development. He also serves as the new media coordinator for Global Financial Integrity. Prem Sikka, professor of accounting at the University of Essex, has an article published on the Guardian’s website today which explains how British lawmakers are enabling terrorism by prioritizing laissez-faire over public safety.  From the article: US security officials claim that the growing presence of terrorist networks operated by al-Qaida and others in the UK poses a major security threat. The UK fights wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, but its domestic laws can enable Osama bin Laden, al-Qaida and others to own and operate companies and move resources. For less than £100 almost anyone can buy a ready-made off-the-shelf company. Armed with the certificate of incorporation, the controllers can open bank accounts and be in a position to move cash throug...

January 26, 2010 By REUTERS Filed at 5:31 p.m. ET LONDON (Reuters) - Britain will promise on Wednesday to set up an agreement with developing countries to combat tax evasion by the end of the year, a finance ministry spokesman said on Tuesday. The proposal would provide a framework for developing countries, predominantly in Africa, to share information on possible tax evasion with Britain and each other without having to set up a series of bilateral agreements. "The UK will commit to finalise a multilateral tax information exchange agreement by the end of the year with a variety of developing countries and will urge other developed nations to follow our lead," the spokesman said. Multilateral tax information exchange agreements already operate between the developed countries in the European Union. The financial secretary to the Treasury, Stephen Timms, will promote the idea at a meeting of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development in Paris on Wednesday,...