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CORRUPTION NEWS

Passports for sale: the risks of golden visa programmes

By Natalie Ritchie    First published on the Global Anticorruption Blog In 1984, the government of the small Caribbean island state of Saint Kitts and Nevis had a bright idea for attracting foreign capital: the country would grant permanent resident status to any foreign national who invested a sufficient amount in the country. The idea caught Read more >

CORRUPTION NEWS

Poor ‘golden visa’ due diligence a gift to the corrupt

By Daniel GayneFirst published on Global Witness Yesterday, 11 March, was Commonwealth Day, and this year’s theme was A Connected Commonwealth. How appropriate – it is after all, the Commonwealth’s incredible connectedness that has made its members such successful players in the fast-expanding US$3-billion ‘Golden Visa’ market. Golden visas – or citizenship-by-investment programmes for those Read more >

CORRUPTION NEWS

Global clean-up of money laundering

By Rhoda Weeks-Brown First published on the International Monetary Fund (IMF) Al Capone had a problem: he needed a way to disguise the enormous amounts of cash generated by his criminal empire as legitimate income. His solution was to buy all-cash laundromats, mix dirty money in with clean, and then claim that washing ordinary Americans’ Read more >

CORRUPTION NEWS

Namibia removed from list of tax havens

Original source: Reuters European Union (EU) finance ministers removed Namibia from the bloc’s blacklist of tax havens on Tuesday after it committed itself to changing its tax rules and practices, the EU said. The Economic and Financial Affairs Council established the list in December 2017, with the overall goal of improving tax good governance globally Read more >

LEGISLATION AND SUBMISSIONS

Foreign bribery largely unchecked in SA, OECD obligations not fulfilled

Yesterday Transparency International (TI) released the 2018 edition of its Exporting Corruption report, following on the previous edition published back in 2015. For South Africa, not much has changed for the better. Exporting Corruption 2018 rates countries on their enforcement against foreign bribery under the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development’s (OECD) Anti-Bribery Convention. The Read more >

LEGISLATION AND SUBMISSIONS

South Africa fails to punish foreign bribery, TI report reveals

Transparency International (TI) has today released the 2018 edition of its Exporting Corruption report, rating countries based on their enforcement against foreign bribery under the OECD Anti-Bribery Convention. The OECD convention requires signatory countries to criminalise bribery of foreign public officials and introduce related measures. TI examined the enforcement of 40 signatory countries and four Read more >

LITIGATION

CW board member to preside over Moyane disciplinary

UPDATE, 22 May 2018: Kate O’Regan has been replaced by advocate Azhar Bham SC, after an objection by the legal team of Moyane. Moyane’s team had concerns about O’Regan’s impartiality in the matter. Embattled former South African Revenue Service (Sars) commissioner Tom Moyane is to face disciplinary charges. The Presidency announced last week that it Read more >

CORRUPTION NEWS

How does money laundering work?

Money launderers make use of numerous twists and turns in their efforts to hide their trails, but how does the process really happen? Here’s how. Money laundering is exactly what the words describe – washing the ill-gotten gains of their illegal origins so that what is left cannot easily be traced back to the original Read more >

CORRUPTION NEWS

Global anti-money laundering in four charts

First published on Transparency International Out of the hundreds of commitments governments have made to fight corruption and money laundering, one of the easiest to keep track of is the promise to implement the global anti-money laundering standards – the FATF recommendations. The Financial Action Task Force (FATF) is the world’s leading anti-money laundering organisation; Read more >