Gary Kalman, the executive director of the Financial Accountability and Corporate Transparency (FACT) Coalition, testified in front of the U.S. Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs on Thursday, June 20, 2019 at a hearing regarding nongovernmental perspectives on the impact of collecting beneficial ownership information as part of legislation designed to protect the U.S. financial system.
On May 7th and 8th, 2019, AFSCME, the Emerging Markets Investors Alliance, the FACT Coalition, Oxfam, and the Transparency & Accountability Initiative hosted a webinar on the harms of inadequate disclosures of corporate tax practices. Moderated by Gary Kalman, Executive Director of FACT Coalition, the webinar featured an expert panel that included, Ty Gellasch, founder of Myrtle Makena and former Senior Counsel to the Senate Permanent Sub-Committee on Investigations, Nicholas Lusiani, Senior Advisor at Oxfam America, Robert M. Wilson, Jr., investment officer and research analyst at MFS Investment Management, and Richard Phillips, former senior policy analyst at the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy.
Gary Kalman, the executive director of the Financial Accountability and Corporate Transparency (FACT) Coalition, testified in front of the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Financial Services Subcommittee on Financial Institutions and Consumer Credit on Friday, April 27, 2018 at a hearing regarding the implementation of the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network’s (FinCEN) rule on Customer Due Diligence Requirements for Financial Institutions.
Over the past several decades, anonymous shell companies have been at the heart of heinous crimes, including cases of grand corruption, human trafficking, and even the facilitation of the opioid epidemic. Didier Jacobs of Oxfam America highlighted some of the blights of anonymous companies in a recent blog. In it, he describes how drug lords, corrupt politicians, and human traffickers are able to perform illegal acts while hidden from justice by a veil of anonymity. With shielded identities, criminals can effectively function above the law.
A little over a year ago, the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) released the Panama Papers, a treasure trove of information and a window into the world of financial secrecy. In some ways, much of what the Panama Papers revealed was already well known. Previous estimates put the amount of money hidden in offshore secrecy havens somewhere between $8 trillion and $32 trillion. In 2015, The New York Times published an impressive five-part series on the use of anonymous shell companies to purchase prime real estate in New York City. Prior to that, the U.S. Justice Department filed a lawsuit (which they just won on June 29th) to force the forfeiture of New York property secretly owned by the government of Iran in direct violation of economic sanctions. And so on. Yet it is hard to deny the captivating intrigue of the specific stories in the Panama Papers involving Russian kleptocrats, world leaders, athletes, movie stars, and others.
Seasoned Policy Strategist Looks to Elevate Coalition in Wake of Panama Papers
WASHINGTON, D.C. – The FACT (Financial Accountability and Corporate Transparency) Coalition today welcomed aboard Gary Kalman as FACT’s new executive director, effective Monday, April 11, 2016.
