SMEs series with Korsi DZOKOTO: The growing financial secrecy thebftonline.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from thebftonline.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
Cyprus Confidential shows dangers of EU forgetting lessons of past leaks, says Tax Justice Network taxjustice.net - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from taxjustice.net Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
In February 2022, the United States (US) government uncovered money laundering syndicates involved in stealing Covid-19 relief funds from the US and transferring them to Kenya. The US Federal Bureau of Investigation and Internal Revenue Service Criminal Investigation found that between February 2020 and February 2022, US$250-million was illegally transferred through banks, real estate agencies and other financial institutions in Kenya. The money was used to buy beach plots, luxury vehicles and holiday homes, among other things.
Last month Transparency International released the latest version of its Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI), the most widely adopted measure of public sector corruption currently available. But as many have pointed out before, the CPI only attempts to measure corruption that originates at home, not whether a country’s policies enable corruption around the globe. This is why countries like the UK and the US still score relatively well on the CPI, despite continuing to play host to illicit cash from poorer countries that are more traditionally considered corrupt.
Former Morgan Stanley CEO John Mack, who last month published “Up Close and All In: Life Lessons from a Wall Street Warrior,” and ran Credit Suisse from 2001-2004, says Swiss banks continue to be some of the most secretive in the world.