Ethics and governance in the European Financial centers

Transparency International today published its CPI (Corruption Perception Index).

The press release admits that the CPI is perfectible:

Financial secrecy jurisdictions, linked to many countries that top the CPI, severely undermine efforts to tackle corruption and recover stolen assets. Corrupt money must not find safe haven. It is time to put an end to excuses,” said Labelle. “The OECD’s work in this area is welcome, but there must be more bilateral treaties on information exchange to fully end the secrecy regime. At the same time, companies must cease operating in renegade financial centres.

It was reported in september that Dr. Johann Graf Lambsdorff, creator of the Corruption Perceptions Index, would no longer publish the landmark corruption ranking, he had said in an email to the Transparency International network. Lambsdorff wrote: "It is you, the movement, that will have to start anew to educate TI-S to deliver an acceptable product."

Transparency Indernational smells the coffee with financial secrecy.

60% of the top 20 jurisdictions of the CPI are jurisdiction identified by TJN in the FSI (Financial Secrecy Index) table.

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Les Echos yesterday reported that Patrick Littaye, co Access International Advisors, has summoned before courts CSSF and every UBS entities involved with Luxalpha (UBS Luxembourg, UBS Third Party Management, UBS Fund Services, UBS AG).

In his opinion CSSF could not ignore the links between UBS and Madoff.

I am sad for Luxembourg: they were not courageous enough at the begining to admit that they the local functioning opened the drift with Madoff as I demonstrated.

I stated the solution early this year: The only way for investors that are victims of a lax legal and regulatory framework to be respected would be a payment by the Luxembourg State that would go later before the court for the refund in the legal and regulatory framework it enforced.

Should they have compensated the clients, the issue would be over. The reality is that for clients recovering their money lost will be a "long shot" with expenses to pay for the lawyers that anyway will not be included in the surplus of the winding-up.

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