Money Laundering - Crime, Tax Evasion, Bribes and the Financial System / IPS Inter Press Service

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Wednesday, February 08, 2012 21:36 GMT

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AFRICA
Emerging Trend Towards Establishing Offshore Tax Havens
By Hilaire Avril
LONDON - As several African governments examine the possibility of setting up their own "offshore" financial centres, the trade name for tax havens, campaigners are calling for transparency and fair tax regimes.
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Middle East Fast Bleeding Money
By Emad Mekay
CAIRO - Middle East countries have seen the largest increase of illicit outflows of funds to richer nations, depriving the developing nations of much needed development money, a new international report shows.
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COLOMBIA
Drug Trade's Hold on Football Persists
By Helda Martínez
BOGOTÁ - Football, the most popular sport in Colombia, has been subject to heavy pressures from drug trafficking since the mid-1970s. A new study shows that the illicit trade continues to tarnish the upper echelons of this sport.
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FINANCE
Ecuador Wants Off the Money-Laundering List
By Gonzalo Ortiz
QUITO - "It sounds incredible, but it's just a matter of a letter that wasn't turned in on time," Ecuador's attorney general said in regards to the Financial Action Task Force decision to qualify the country as "posing a risk to the international financial system."
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POLITICS
Not Quite Cricket - India’s Most Popular Sport on Trial
By Ranjit Devraj
NEW DELHI - Allegations that India’s junior foreign minister Shashi Tharoor had swung outsize ‘sweat equity’ for a female friend in a newly floated professional cricket league franchise may have cost him his job, but it may also expose the multi- million dollar India Premium League (IPL) as a massive money-laundering enterprise.
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EUROPE
Tax Evasion Rampant Despite Treaties With Tax Havens
By Julio Godoy
BERLIN - New cases of tax evasion in several European countries are showing the limits of the informal agreements reached between the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) and tax havens such as Switzerland, Luxembourg and Liechtenstein.
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ECONOMY
Government Failures Feeding Next Financial Bubble
Analysis by Julio Godoy
BERLIN - Numerous failures by industrialised countries’ governments and central banks in managing the financial crisis are feeding the next bubble, which most likely will again provoke economic woes such as recession, unemployment, and poverty, according to economists and analysts.
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Q&A
"Political Elites Ensure Continuing Flight of Dirty Money"
Hilaire Avril interviews RAYMOND BAKER, campaigner against corruption and money-laundering
PARIS - Illegal capital flight in the form of corrupt, criminal and illicit commercial proceeds out of developing economies could be as high as one trillion dollars a year.
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LATIN AMERICA
Investigative Journalists Show Their Mettle
By Ángel Páez
LIMA - "One way of ensuring the future of journalism is to improve content quality, and this means investigating what is deliberately hidden, like corruption," said Gerardo Reyes, a reporter for the Miami newspaper El Nuevo Herald, on a visit to the Peruvian capital.
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VENEZUELA
Drug Trafficking Getting Worse, Says U.S. Report
By Danielle Kurtzleben and Ali Gharib*
WASHINGTON - Governmental corruption and the refusal to cooperate with U.S. counter-drug efforts are worsening a ballooning drug trafficking problem in Venezuela, according to a new report by the investigative office of the U.S. Congress.
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Q&A
Tax Havens, Bank Secrecy, and Tricks
Lucy Komisar interviews BOB ROACH, Chief Investigator of the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations of the U.S. Senate
MIAMI, Florida - At a recent conference in Miami organised by Offshore Alert, a specialised media organisation focused on financial crime, IPS correspondent Lucy Komisar sat down with veteran investigator Bob Roach to discuss the hurdles facing regulators trying to crack down on tax havens, which cost the U.S. alone an estimated 100 billion dollars annually.
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SPAIN-EQUATORIAL GUINEA
More Trade, Little Pressure
By Tito Drago
MADRID - Trade between Spain and Equatorial Guinea is flourishing, amidst calls by activists for the government of Spanish Prime Minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero to push for democracy in this tiny country on the Atlantic coast of Africa, still under the yoke of dictatorship.
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COLOMBIA
All the President’s Spies
Analysis by Javier Darío Restrepo
BOGOTA - Colombian journalist Hollman Morris phoned an international news agency and said in an agitated voice: "I am being followed by the police."
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Money laundering is the mechanism by which 'dirty' money is transformed into 'clean' money, ready to be funneled into the financial system without a trace of where it came from. Money laundering is a global issue, amounting to as much as 5 percent of global GDP, according to the International Monetary Fund (IMF).

Narco traffickers, terrorists, thieves, embezzlers, fraudsters, tax dodgers, corrupt public servants and politicians - all strive to make their ill-gotten gains appear legal.

IPS reports on how this is affecting developing countries around the world.