Ethics and governance in the European Financial centers

The third quarter 2007 edition of Tax Justice Focus (TJF) is a special edition on accountability, edited by Jean Meckaert, and co-edited by Nicholas Shaxson and John Christensen.

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Susan Grossey, from Thinking about Crime Limited, a money-laundering and financial services consultancy, was recently interviewed by Financial World. She underlined that money laundering poses many threats to individual countries’ financial systems because "the justice systems in some countries are more corrupt or less efficient than in others".

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Transparency International published their new Corruption Perceptions Index a couple of days ago.
As Richard Murphy observes, 50% of the top 10% of the cleanest countries in the world are tax havens so are over 50% of the next decile of which serious offshore players providing conduit facilities that without doubt help the flow of funds out of the developing countries of the world.

Richard Murphy observes a weakness of the index : itmeasures the corruption of politicians and public officials, but not the private sector.

Another weakness of this index is that it is based on the "perception" of coruption, which is a feeling.

The point is how individuals that have no feeling of guiltiness may be aware of what corruption is. For example when bankers is Luxembourg dare do write that "offences such as forgery, use of forgery, false balance sheets, use of false balance sheets or unauthorised use of corporate property should not be included [in the law]. These are offences with financial connotations which are confused with laundering for the sole purpose of applying exceptional powers to these vague offences” (Source: ABBL, Annual Report 2003, p. 21), how can they be aware of what corruption is if they are not clear enough with these penal offences ?

Read Richard Murphy's analysis

Download the Index