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

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Sunday, March 14, 2010 17:31 GMT

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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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EGYPT: Muslim Brotherhood on the Mat
By Adam Morrow and Khaled Moussa Al-Omrani
CAIRO - Several leading members of the Muslim Brotherhood opposition movement stand accused of plans to form an "international network of organisational cells." Its leaders say the charges are blatant fabrications.
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ECONOMY-INDIA: Tax Haven Loot Turns Election Issue*
By Ranjit Devraj
NEW DELHI - General elections currently being contested in India have brought an unusual issue to the fore - the repatriation of more than a trillion dollars believed to have been stashed away in Swiss and other tax havens.
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CHINA: Macau Gaming Boom at a Cost
By Antoaneta Bezlova
MACAU - Beijing’s decade-old flirt with lucrative gambling in the booming casino town of Macau has gone decidedly sour.
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FINANCE: Tax Havens in Spotlight at G20 Meet
By Lucy Komisar*
NEW YORK - 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.
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RIGHTS-PERU: Spying on Social Movements
By Ángel Páez
LIMA - 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.
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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.