October 24, 2024
“Just the FACTs” is a round-up of news stories and information regarding efforts to combat corrupt financial practices, including offshore tax haven abuses, corporate secrecy, and money laundering through the financial system.
Send feedback or items for future newsletters to Thomas Georges at [email protected] |
Here’s the State of Play:
New FACT Research Bolsters Case for U.S. Action on Environmental Crimes at UN Biodiversity Conference
|
|
|
FACT’s latest report analyzing money laundering typologies associated with environmental crimes finds that, among 230 analyzed cases, the United States is the most common foreign destination for the products and proceeds of environmental crimes committed in countries in the Amazon region. The report, authored by FACT program director for environmental crime and illicit finance Julia Yansura, also finds that anonymous shell and front companies are the most common secrecy vehicles used to commit and conceal the proceeds of environmental crimes.
Just one week after the launch of the report, FACT joined leading civil society groups from Colombia, Peru, and Brazil for a panel discussion on illegal mining in the Amazon as a part of the sixteenth meeting of the Conference of the Parties to the UN Convention on Biological Diversity (COP16). Like many environmental crimes, illegal mining has an outsized impact on biodiversity in vulnerable ecosystems, as well as on local communities.
|
|
|
FACT’s joint presentation at COP16 was accompanied by the release of a new policy brief – coauthored by the Amazon Alliance for Reducing the Impacts of Gold Mining (AARIMO) in Colombia, the Igarapé Institute in Brazil, and the Observatory on Illegal Mining (OMI) in Peru – detailing seven key recommendations for governments to help mitigate the harms of illegal mining. Among other measures, the brief calls for renewed efforts to combat illicit financial flows associated with environmental crimes in the region, including through anti-money laundering reforms in “destination” countries like the United States, and through increased intergovernmental collaboration.
|
| |
|
2024 has been a transformative year for such efforts: the U.S. anti-money laundering framework underwent crucial revisions through the launch of the nation’s first beneficial ownership registry in January, and Treasury finalized long-awaited new rules bringing anti-money laundering safeguards to domestic residential real estate and private investment markets in August. Treasury also recently advanced a major new intergovernmental initiative – the Amazon Region Initiative Against Illicit Finance – to target the proceeds of nature crimes through enhanced information exchange and technical assistance to governments in the Amazon region, in line with long-standing FACT recommendations.
|
|
|
Treasury to Advance Long Awaited Anti-Money Laundering Reforms in Early 2024 |
|
|
|
Last week, FACT submitted official comments to the House Ways and Means Committee’s Republican Tax Team for Global Competitiveness calling on lawmakers to help level the playing field for wholly domestic businesses and raise substantial revenues by addressing unfair tax breaks given to U.S.-based multinational corporations. The reforms proposed in FACT’s comment would raise up to one trillion dollars in new revenue and end tax incentives for U.S. multinationals to shift jobs and profits offshore. These include measures to: |
|
|
- Equalize the tax rates for foreign and domestic earnings. Currently, U.S. multinationals can get up to a 50 percent tax discount on their foreign profits, all while receiving further tax benefits from packing up their U.S. operations (and associated jobs) and moving them offshore.
-
Repeal wasteful handouts for specific industries, including the Foreign-Derived Intangible Income deduction, which rewards big tech companies for making windfall profits from export sales, and the Foreign Oil And Gas Extraction Income exemption, which subsidizes U.S. companies engaged in drilling abroad.
-
Adopt the Undertaxed Profits Rule, which would allow the U.S. to tax subsidiaries of foreign corporations engaged in profit shifting and other tax avoidance schemes.
- Protect American investors from tax risks by requiring greater transparency from U.S. multinational corporations.
The recommendations made in last week’s comment build upon FACT’s new policy platform for the 2025 tax debate. |
|
|
|
Amazon Region Environmental Crime Investigations Often Fail to ‘Follow the Money’: Report FACT’s new report detailing money laundering typologies associated with environmental crimes in the Amazon region was covered by The Hill’s Zack Budryk. From the report: “Going forward, it is important to improve countries’ capacity to integrate financial investigations into their environmental crime investigation and enforcement actions. The U.S. government should support these efforts through capacity building and technical assistance to countries in the Amazon region, leveraging the existing framework of Treasury’s Amazon Region Initiative.”
|
|
|
| Lifting the Veil on Tens of Billions in Oil Company Payments to Governments
FACT policy director Zorka Milin was quoted in Inside Climate News’ coverage of the first round of payments-to-governments disclosures by large U.S. oil and gas companies under Dodd-Frank Section 1504.
“This is kind of an instructive story of how big powerful oil interests did not want to see this reform happen, and they threw everything at it, and they won some things but didn’t carry the day,” Milin said. “I think that is something hopeful.”
|
|
|
Recent and Upcoming Events |
|
|
|
Watch: Foreign Agents – A Book Talk and Panel Discussion with Casey Michel
On October 17, 2024, the FACT Coalition and Transparency International U.S. hosted a virtual book talk and panel discussion with Casey Michel, author of the new book, Foreign Agents: How American Lobbyists and Lawmakers Threaten Democracy Around the World. The discussion focused on the most important reforms U.S. policymakers can make to ensure that foreign agents – and dirty money – don’t undermine American democracy. |
|
|
| October 29: Transparency, Anti-Corruption and Asset Recovery to Mobilize and Safeguard Financing for Development FACT executive director Ian Gary will be presenting at a panel on financial transparency alongside experts from Open Contracting Partnership, Open Ownership, the UNCAC Coalition, and the Stolen Asset Recovery Initiative next week at the UN FfD4 preparatory session.
The panel will touch on key reforms that enhance transparency, accountability, and inclusiveness – including beneficial ownership transparency and public procurement reform – to combat corruption and mobilize funds towards achieving the UN Sustainable Development Goals.
A link to stream this event will be provided in the coming days. Keep an eye on the web page linked above for information on how to tune in! |
|
|
About the FACT Coalition
The Financial Accountability and Corporate Transparency (FACT) Coalition is a non-partisan coalition of more than 100 state, national, and international organizations working toward a fair and honest tax system that addresses the challenges of a global economy and promotes policies to combat the harmful impacts of corrupt financial practices.
For more information, visit www.thefactcoalition.org
Find us on social media below: |
|
|
|
