FINANCE: Tax Havens in Spotlight at G20 Meet

This could be the moment when a fatal blow is delivered to the world's tax havens. Or it could be another largely cosmetic change that allows offshore financial centres such as Switzerland, the Cayman Islands and Liechtenstein to deflect attacks on the system by sacrificing the few tax miscreants that governments catch in their nets.

RIGHTS-PERU: Spying on Social Movements

Business Track, a private security firm, was engaged in spying on non-governmental organisations, environmental activists, social movements and opposition groups in Peru, sources in the police, prosecutor’s office and courts investigating the case told IPS.

FINANCE: Major Banks Grease Wheels for Corrupt Regimes

Some of the world's leading banks facilitate corruption in the poorest countries, charges a new report by Global Witness, an independent watchdog group.

CARIBBEAN: Bank Scandals Add to Region’s Economic Woes

Caribbean leaders emerged from a one-day special summit on Wednesday night to announce new mechanisms to deal with some of the problems plaguing the region's financial sectors, occasioned not only by the ongoing global crisis, but by several homegrown scandals as well.

POLITICS: Two Kenyas, Two Dreams: Which Do We Want?

Kenya's civil society has rebuffed efforts by its embattled government to restore its tattered image in the wake of waning public confidence in the state. Their major grievance is that the country's problems, including high level graft, are the result of a culture of impunity that has engulfed the nation's top officials and politicians.

/EXCLUSIVE/FINANCE: How One Fund’s Profits Ended Up in the Caymans

President Barack Obama said he would crack down on firms that use offshore centres to evade taxes. He could begin with a New York subsidiary of one of the world's largest private banks, which used a Cayman Islands company to shift its profits.

FINANCE: Crisis Pits Vatican Against Offshore Bankers

The financial crisis has the U.S. swirling with charges about the immoral greed of some corporate executives who recklessly bet their companies' futures to line their own pockets. The popular fix for this international calamity stops at the nation's borders: decouple top-line salaries and bonuses from stock prices and institute more transparency and regulation.

CORRUPTION: Little Movement Against Tax Havens

As many feared, little action has resulted from the latest attempt to move against tax havens.

CORRUPTION: Norway Turns the Spotlight on Tax Havens

A new commission appointed by Norway will investigate ways of putting a stop to the huge flows of money into tax havens. Tax evasion and corruption are believed to cost poor countries at least 50 billion dollars a year.

ECONOMY-INDIA: Foreign Money Transfers Under the Scanner

With Indians spending more money abroad and even picking up blue chip firms the government has decided to take a closer look at suspected money laundering activity and dubious international fund transfers.

EUROPE: Tax Havens Cheating the Poor

Tax havens in Europe are depriving poor countries of more money than they receive in development aid, it has been alleged.

RIGHTS-PERU: Terrorist Supporters or Victims of Witch Hunt?

Peru’s counter-terrorism police dismantled the local chapter of the Continental Bolivarian Committee (CCB-CP) and arrested its members on charges of supporting terrorism and having ties to Colombia’s guerrillas.

GERMANY: Corruption Feeds the New Market

The revelation that hundreds of wealthy Germans have made illegal investments in Liechtenstein to avoid taxes, and the unearthing of new cases of corruption in top enterprises, raise new questions about the way the market economy is going.

CORRUPTION: Treaty Could Be Working – Or Not

Ongoing international talks on the question of how to strengthen a U.N. treaty against corruption are doomed to failure unless governments agree to take practical actions to demonstrate compliance, according to observers who are attending a major anti-corruption summit in Indonesia this week.

U.S.-PALESTINE: Marzook Case Places New Challenge for Washington

The decision by the political leader of Palestine's Islamist 'Hamas' organisation not to fight U.S. extradition proceedings is both a victory and a dangerous hot potato for the White House.