Illicit Finance

More from the Series

Blog Post
How Big Is the Transfer Pricing Prize for Development?
Maya Forstater
August 18, 2017
It is often stated that developing countries are “haemorrhaging billions of dollars” of tax revenues through companies abusing transfer pricing, in particular by mispricing commodities.There is no doubt that companies can take advantage of weak regulations and enforcement, but new studie...
Blog Post
Why Do People Think Nigeria Might Be Losing $1 Trillion to Corporate Tax Evasion?
Maya Forstater
June 21, 2017
Misunderstandings about the scale of multinational tax avoidance are common. The origin story for an erroneous $1 trillion figure is a case of bad lip reading, but its proliferation reflects the belief that there are absolutely huge sums of money for development at stake from cra...
Blog Post
Demonetization Ushers in New Era of Digital Finance in India
February 23, 2017
It has been more than 100 days since the Modi government declared that the two largest denomination notes in India—the 500 and 1000 rupee notes—would no longer be accepted as legal tender. The announcement of “demonetization” had an immediate and sweeping effect on Indian hou...
Blog Post
Criminal Finances: Should the UK Be Imposing Public Registers of Beneficial Ownership on Its Ex-Colonies?
Maya Forstater
February 09, 2017
A new Criminal Finances Bill is making its way through the UK House of Commons which aims to make it harder for criminals and kleptocrats to use the UK financial system to launder ill-gotten gains, while minimising the burden on legitimate businesses and individuals. The bill gives expande...
Blog Post
Gaps in Trade Data ≠ Criminal Money Laundering
Maya Forstater
January 06, 2017
WORKING PAPERS
The Impact of Anti-Money Laundering Regulation on Payment Flows: Evidence from SWIFT Data - Working Paper 445
December 20, 2016
Regulatory pressure on international banks to fight money laundering (ML) and terrorist financing (TF) increased substantially in the past decade. We find countries that have been added to a high-risk greylist face up to a 10% decline in the number of cross border payments received from other jurisd...
Blog Post
India Prime Minister Enacts Bold Policy to Cut Down on “Black Money”
November 10, 2016
Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s announced a bold measure on Wednesday to reduce the role of unaccounted for cash or “black money” in the country’s economy by “de-monetizing” higher-denomination currency notes. The new policy bans the use of 500 rupee and 1,000 rupe...