Tuesday, May 31, 2011

Links May 31

India to quantify black money, exhaustive study underway AML-CFT
May 29 - Amid mounting pressure to unearth black money, the government has commissioned an in-depth study to quantify unaccounted income and wealth stashed within and outside the country in 16 months. The study will also suggest ways to detect and prevent unaccounted money, bringing it into the tax net. Hat tip Markus Meinzer.

Review Petroleum and Mining Contracts GhanaWeb

May 30 - Reporting on the "communiqué adopted at a Strategic Planning Session of the Tax Justice Network Ghana held last week in Kumasi. The session, which was attended by representatives of civil society organizations and their partners, was coordinated by the Integrated Social Development Centre (ISODEC)."

Press Release: Tackling illicit capital flows begins with the recognition that it is against national interest
UN Economic Commission for Africa
May 18 - Reporting from the Tax and Development Conference held in Addis Ababa - "Dereje Alemayehu, Christian Aid Country Manager for East Africa and Chair of the Tax Justice Network-Africa said that the extent of tax leakages is absolutely alarming and dangerous, not just for Africa but for most developing countries."

Namibia looking for mineral windfall tax International Business Times

May 17 - Namibia is looking to introduce a minerals windfall tax to enable the state to benefit more from the country's vast mineral resources. The move is the latest by Namibia, home to some of the world's largest uranium reserves, to increase its share of the money made by mining companies.

Transfer pricing ‘deprives’ the poor Business Day

May 6 - Transfer pricing is an increasingly high-risk area in Africa and it is vital that the tax authorities co-operate and share best practice, says Logan Wort, executive secretary of the African Tax Administration Forum (Ataf), speaking at the Deloitte Africa Tax Summit held in Johannesburg earlier this month. See also: Africa's tax systems face challenges Business Day.

Bid to block European Investment Bank loans to newly-floated Glencore Daily Mail

May 25 - Further news on the Glencore story we have been blogging - as the company was floated on the London Stock Exchange, a group of 50 MEPs were submitting an open letter to the European Investment Bank:" ‘Considering the problems regarding transparency and good governance in most of these countries, investments in the mining sector [are] a hazardous venture,’ they point out"
- the European Investment Bank granted Glencore a development loan of 48 million euros in 2005.

See also:
Zambia: Who profits from copper? France5
(In French)
May 31 - MEP Eva Joly is cited as denouncing the Glencore scandal, observing that within a few decades we will view this type of scenario with the same eyes as we saw colonization and slavery.

Argentina: Tax Reform Needed: Its Guidelines IADE (In Spanish)
May 26 - Jorge Gaggero presents an outline of reform aimed at addressing crucial issues of challenge of fiscal policy: the macroeconomic, the public goods and redistributing income, and competitiveness. Hat tip Markus Meinzer.


Switzerland: The double role of public prosecutor Damiel Zapelli LeTemps (In French)
May 30 - David LeLoup reports on how the Swiss public prosecutor is a director of two active Panamian shell companies.
How can one be both a party to an opaque company registered in a tax haven, and magistrate in charge of tracking fraud and money laundering?

An E-Mail from Athens naked capitalism
May 30 - "Wow, this is what debt slavery looks like on a national level. The Financial Times reports that a new austerity package is about to be foisted on Greece. It amounts to asset stripping and a serious curtailment of national sovereignty." Hat tip The Cynical Tendency.

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