Friday April 12, 2019
The FACT Coalition is pleased to partner with the Bank Policy Institute to host a panel discussion on beneficial ownership transparency.
This past week, FACT Coalition member Global Financial Integrity released a report with a comprehensive state-by-state comparison of what information is required to set up a company versus obtain a library card. Astonishingly, in every state, far more personal information was needed to set up a library card than a company. This is especially startling when you realize the extent to which a company—without an accountable individual attached—could be used to commit crimes with impunity.
This report came just a week after the House Financial Services Committee’s subcommittee that covers national security issues held a hearing on corporate transparency and efforts to fight money laundering. In the lead up to the hearing Representative Carolyn Maloney (D-NY) released a discussion draft of the Corporate Transparency Act of 2019, which would require the collection of beneficial ownership information. All the witnesses at the hearing supported the collection of beneficial ownership information as an important anti-corruption, anti-money-laundering tool. In fact, all but one witness who testified at hearings in this and the previous Congress in which corporate transparency was discussed have said that beneficial ownership disclosure was an important anti-money-laundering measure. In a blog discussing this month’s hearing, FACT’s Gary Kalman encouraged lawmakers to this time listen to what the witnesses have to say. Anti-human trafficking, faith, and law enforcement organizations also encouraged the committee to take action on anonymous companies.
March 22, 2019
The ACAMS US Capital Chapter is pleased to partner with Global Financial Integrity, the FACT Coalition, and Transparency International for another in our series on beneficial ownership and corporate transparency.
“No Tax Breaks for Outsourcing Act” Endorsed by 57 National Organizations, Sponsored by 80 Members of Congress
WASHINGTON, D.C. – Eighty lawmakers introduced legislation Wednesday that would equalize the tax rates for domestic businesses and multinational corporations — reducing the tax incentive to shift profits and operations overseas that were enacted under the recent tax overhaul, according to the Financial Accountability and Corporate Transparency (FACT) Coalition.
Thirty years after the end of the Cold War, the world is once again polarized between two competing visions for how to organize society. On one side are countries such as the United States, which are founded on respect for the inviolable rights of the individual and governed by rule of law. On the other side are countries where state power is concentrated in the hands of a single person or clique, accountable only to itself and oiled by corruption.
Alarmingly, while Washington has grown ambivalent in recent years about the extent to which America should encourage the spread of democracy and human rights abroad, authoritarian regimes have become increasingly aggressive and creative in attempting to export their own values against the United States and its allies. Russian President Vladimir Putin and other authoritarian rulers have worked assiduously to weaponize corruption as an instrument of foreign policy, using money in opaque and illicit ways to gain influence over other countries, subvert the rule of law and otherwise remake foreign governments in their own kleptocratic image.
In this respect, the fight against corruption is more than a legal and moral issue; it has become a strategic one — and a battleground in a great power competition.
Yet corruption is not only one of the most potent weapons wielded by America’s authoritarian rivals, it is also, in many cases, what sustains these regimes in power and is their Achilles’ heel.
Global Reporting Initiative’s Proposal Could Bring Public Country-by-Country Reporting of Taxes, Profits, Revenues, and Employees to More than 4,000 Companies
Plan Comes as U.S. Senators Call on GM to Disclose Country-by-Country Data
WASHINGTON, D.C. – A global sustainability standards-setting body issued a proposal Thursday to have multinational companies publicly disclose basic financial information on a country-by-country basis, in a move praised by transparency advocates. The Sustainability Reporting Standards from the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) are voluntarily followed by over 4,000 businesses in more than 90 countries. The draft GRI “Standard on Tax and Payments to Governments” was developed by a multi-stakeholder technical committee consisting of representatives from PricewaterhouseCoopers, MFS Investment Management, Vodaphone PLC, and the Tax Justice Network, among others.
