Global Financial Integrity: its time has come
GFI hasproduced a report analyzing the shocking loss of wealth occurring through just one trade mechanism: invoice mispricing. Some of the highest levels of missing tax revenues affect the smallest countries. Effective international co-operation is needed for countries to grapple with sophisticated globalized tax avoidance and wealth concealment.
The papers are wall-to-wall covered with Coronavirus news but that does not mean that other crucial issues should slip by un-noticed, or deliberately withheld because "today is a good day to bury bad news"as one of Blair's spin advisors said on Sept.11th 2001.
Global Financial Integrity has released a report that opens a window on one of the ways in which the globalized economy now deprives millions of people in both developed and developing countries of the added value that their labour creates - and effectively puts it into the hands of the rich.
There are many ways this can be done during trade transactions and this report deals with just one: -invoice mispricing.
This is the process in which according to the GFI report "traders deliberately falsify the stated prices on invoices for goods they are importing and exporting as a way to illicitly transfer value across international borders..'.'. It may be done to evade taxes, launder money, avoid currency controls or hide profits offshore. The amounts involved are shocking - the report estimates a total of $8.7 Trillion has been disappeared in trade between 135 developing and 36 developed countries between 2008 - 2017, $818 billion of which in 2017.
It is not the same thing as transfer mispricing, which has also been estimated to divert vast sums of money onto a conveyor belt carrying wealth to those at the top of the global pyramid - another $1.1Trillion between 2005 - 2007 alone, just for imports into the EU and US, according to Christian Aid.
This interview was first published on The Prisma Multicultural Newspaper site on March 30th 2020 and can be read in full with photos here:
https://theprisma.co.uk/2020/03/30/global-financial-integrity-its-time-has-come/