“Just the FACTs” is a round-up of news stories and information regarding efforts to combat corrupt financial practices, including offshore tax haven abuses, corporate secrecy, and money laundering through the financial system.
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State of Play
At FACT Event, Experts Spotlight Financial Transparency and Tax Fairness as Cornerstones to Renew American Democracy
On September 22, 2026, the FACT Coalition convened leading experts for a timely discussion on how tax policy, financial transparency, and wealth concentration shape democratic accountability, and why tackling financial secrecy and economic inequality is essential to restoring public trust in democracy.
This wide-ranging conversation drew on two new books: Vanessa Williamson’s The Price of Democracy: The Revolutionary Power of Taxation in American History and Casey Michel’s United States of Oligarchy: How America’s Wealthiest Ally with Dictators, Weaken the U.S., and Destroy Democracy. As in her book, Williamson’s remarks challenged the myth that Americans are instinctively anti-tax, and argued that fair taxation is one of our most powerful weapons in the ongoing fight for a genuine egalitarian democracy. Michel, meanwhile, traced how weak transparency laws have turned the U.S. into a magnet for foreign dirty money, and how that same infrastructure of financial secrecy now shields a domestic oligarchic class as it once shielded foreign kleptocrats.
Moderated by FACT co-director Zorka Milin, the conversation underscored a central challenge facing American democracy: restoring public trust requires a government that responds to the needs and concerns of ordinary people, rather than serving the interests of the wealthy and powerful. As Sarah Pray emphasized, the problem is not that Americans have abandoned democracy, but that many have lost confidence in their government’s willingness or ability to deliver for them.
Citing new polling that shows widespread dissatisfaction with the outsized influence of wealthy individuals and corporations, Pray argued that meaningful policy reforms can help rebuild that trust. “If Congress can enact broadly popular reforms despite opposition from wealthy and powerful interests, that tells people something about who has power in our democracy,” she said.
A full recap and recording of the event are now available on FACT’s website.
New GAO Report Shows Heightened Fraud Risks Following Treasury’s Gutting of Corporate Transparency Act
On September 30, the Government Accountability Office released a report finding that hundreds of billions of federal dollars are currently vulnerable to fraud risks because the government often can’t tell who is really behind the companies it pays. In 2021, Congress passed two provisions as part of the defense bill – Section 885 and the Corporate Transparency Act (CTA) – that would enable federal auditors to understand the true, or “beneficial,” owners behind businesses receiving federal awards.
The GAO report details how the Trump administration’s gutting of the CTA has undermined both efforts. While beneficial ownership reporting under the CTA generally flowed through Treasury’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN), Section 885 also required the General Services Administration (GSA) to maintain a database of ownership information on federal contractors. The GSA intended to draw data from Treasury’s beneficial ownership registry to develop the contractor database, but the Trump administration’s elimination of reporting requirements for domestic companies has rendered that data source practically useless. As a result, federal auditors have a very limited ability to determine who owns the businesses contracted by the U.S. government.
In a statement, Senators Chuck Grassley (R-IA) and Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) – both longtime transparency advocates and original sponsors of the legislative precursor to the CTA – said that the GAO report “shows that the Treasury Department’s shortsighted decision to gut the CTA leaves hundreds of billions of federal dollars at real risk to fraudsters,” and “underscores how important it is for the U.S. government to fully implement the Corporate Transparency Act’s beneficial ownership reporting requirements.”
FACT in the News
FACT’s Julia Yansura Quoted in New York Times Coverage of Venezuelan Gold Imports
FACT program director for environmental crime Julia Yansura was quoted in a recent front-page New York Times investigation into the Trump Administration’s move to allow some gold imports from Venezuela via OFAC licenses. The investigation found that Venezuelan gold linked to Tren de Guayana, a violent criminal organization operating in southern Venezuela, is entering U.S. markets, raising serious financial integrity risks as the administration advances its signature Venezuelan gold venture.
“Around 90 percent of the gold produced in Venezuela is criminally produced,” said Yansura, program director at the FACT Coalition, a Washington-based anticorruption organization. “If international companies want to go in and try to find the 10 percent that’s supposedly OK, that’s like searching for a needle in a haystack.”
ICIJ: Five years after the Pandora Papers, transparency laws lose their teeth
FACT co-directors Erica Hanichak and Zorka Milin were quoted in coverage by ICIJ’s Brenda Medina examining efforts to fight financial secrecy in the years since the groundbreaking Pandora Papers. Many of these efforts have seen setbacks, chief among them the Trump Administration’s gutting of the Corporate Transparency Act, which passed into law in 2021 after a decade-long campaign by transparency advocates.
As Milin argues in the piece, the administration’s rollback of the Corporate Transparency Act is unlawful: “They basically repealed it,” she said, “but only Congress can repeal laws under our Constitution.” A future administration, noted Milin, could restore the reporting requirements for U.S. companies.
Despite the frustration of watching years of advocacy rolled back by administrative fiat, Hanichak highlighted that the work to promote financial transparency remains imperative. “What’s most important is that we keep coming back every day with the same energy.”
From Our Members and Allies
$15 Trillion on the Table in 2029: Ordinary Taxes to Meet an Extraordinary Fiscal Moment
Read a new tax policy proposal from Professors Kimberly Clausing and Natasha Sarin to raise nearly $15 trillion in new revenue through a combination of domestic and international corporate tax reforms, investments in the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), a new tax on carbon emissions, and reforms to both capital and labor income taxation.
How Gold Surpassed Cocaine as Peru’s Most Profitable Criminal Industry
New reporting by investigative journalist Dan Collyns documents the rise of illegal gold mining in Peru, and the futile efforts of Peruvian law enforcement to destroy mining sites and barges that are often rebuilt and operating again within days.
From the article: “Ronal Flores, a deputy prosecutor for Peru’s Office of the attorney general …said it was pointless to arrest most workers at the camps as they tended to have no knowledge of the workings of the much bigger illicit enterprise…‘In these places, the big fish – the owners – are rarely caught. It’s usually the low-level operatives who we find,’ said Flores.”
ITEP Quoted in Bloomberg Coverage of Runaway Tax Breaks for Data Centers
Matthew Gardner, senior fellow at the FACT-member Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy (ITEP), was quoted extensively by Bloomberg Tax in its coverage of new and expanded U.S. tax incentives for data center development.
Given the extraordinary fiscal cost associated with these tax breaks, combined with growing public discontent over ongoing data center development, “it would be legislative malpractice, budgetary malpractice, for tax writers and Congress not to immediately start asking hard questions,” says Gardner.
Job Openings
Director/Head of Transformational Philanthropy: TRAFFIC
TRAFFIC, a leading organization working to combat illegal wildlife trafficking and illicit networks, is hiring a Director/Head of Transformational Philanthropy. Learn more about the role and apply by October 18 to support the mission of this terrific organization.
Advocacy Counsel: International Corporate Accountability Roundtable (ICAR)
ICAR – a D.C.-based civil society organization committed to ending corporate abuse of people and the planet – seeks an Advocacy Counsel to lead the coalition’s initiatives to build and implement frameworks for the prevention and/or remediation of business-related human rights violations, manage project budgets, participate in strategy setting, and publicly represent ICAR. Learn more about the role, including how to apply, here.
Recent and Upcoming Events
European Parliament Subcommittee on Tax Matters Visit to Washington, DC
On September 21, 2026, FACT co-director Zorka Milin was invited to exchange views with a visiting delegation of Members of the European Parliament’s Subcommittee on Tax Matters. The discussion covered key international tax and transparency priorities, in particular the urgency of addressing digital taxation, the side-by-side system, regrettable U.S. transparency setbacks on beneficial ownership, and broader fiscal concerns that “the increasing cost of servicing [U.S.] debt can become a significant risk for the U.S. and the rest of the world” in the words of the delegation’s leader Luděk Niedermayer.
On September 24, 2026, the FACT Coalition, in partnership with The Sentry and the Center for Climate Crime Analysis (CCCA), convened a discussion hosted by NYU’s Center for Global Affairs on the intersection of financial crime, environmental crime, and climate change.
The conversation, which was moderated by Andrew Lehren, an award-winning environmental journalist and Investigations Editor at Mongabay, explored the financial drivers of environmental crime, the risks that corporate and financial actors may be exposed to as a result, and the opportunities to use financial intelligence and anti-money laundering frameworks to identify and disrupt financial flows linked to environmental harm.
A full summary of the event, along with photos and speaker quotes, can be found here.
10/14/26: FIBA and FACT Coalition Webinar on Illegal Gold Mining, Environmental Crime, and Illicit Finance Risks
On October 14, 2026, FACT program director for environmental crime Julia Yansura will address the illicit finance risks associated with illegal gold as part of a webinar hosted by the Financial & International Business Association (FIBA), a non-profit trade association known for its longstanding work with the Florida banking sector. The webinar will help participants understand emerging trends in illegal gold mining and trafficking, identify red flags associated with related financial activity, and explore resources and practical approaches for responding to these evolving risks. Register for the webinar here.
11/5/26: Panel Discussion – Organized Crime, Environmental Chaos
On November 5, 2026, FACT’s Julia Yansura will be speaking on a panel titled “Organized Crime, Environmental Chaos,” alongside Luis Fernández, executive director of the Centro de Innovación Científica Amazónica (CINCIA). The panel is part of Sustainable, Just & Abundantly Wild: Resilient Leadership for Our Era, hosted by the Andrew Sabin Family Center for Environment and Sustainability at Wake Forest University. Learn more about the agenda and register here.
On November 10, 2026, FACT co-director Zorka Milin will be speaking on a panel discussing the evolving global minimum tax landscape since the side-by-side agreement. Convened by Tax Analysts, the conference brings together leading voices from private practice, academia, and government to provide insight into the most significant policy developments shaping the future of taxation.
About the FACT Coalition