View previous stories
	How anonymously owned companies are used to rip off government budgets by Eryn Schornick Global Witness   Since the financial crisis, we have heard a lot about the revenue governments lose to tax avoidance and evasion, but what about the losses resulting from corruption of governments’ procurement processes? Around the world governments spend $9.5 trillion each year on public works, goods and services. It should be no surprise that fraudsters, and the corrupt, take advantage of this.   According to research by the United Nations, corruption may amount to as much as 25% of government procurement budgets. The results of such fraud are harm to all of us in the form of lower quality infrastructure and services, higher prices, wasted tax dollars and decreased trust in government.   Criminals who are ripping off public budgets need to hide what they’re up to. Anonymously owned companies, or those whose owners are hidden, have proven to be a common facilitator of fraud in public procurement.   Today we’re adding new cases that demonstrate this problem to our online interactive map that tracks the abuse of anonymous company ownership around the world (see link below).   In order to address the issue of fraudsters using anonymous companies to rip off governments, governments should require that a company bidding on government contracts disclose the real people who own or control them (often called “beneficial owners”).   However, the collection of beneficial ownership information in procurement alone is not enough.   To increase transparency and accountability in procurement, open contracting must also be part of the solution—beneficial ownership information should be made public, while award and contract information should be made publicly available for free and in an open data format. In fact, statistics have shown a reduction in costs, fraud and corruption related to the contracting process when linked to open contracting.   In a positive step toward this end, starting in 2015, the U.S. Treasury Department must instruct the U.S. executive directors of each international financial institution (IFI), such as the World Bank and IMF, to seek to require that such institution collect, verify, and publish, beneficial ownership information for privately held companies, which receive U.S. funding through their IFI. It is critical that this important provision is robustly implemented.   In recognizing the high risks of corruption in government contracting and subsequent direct, negative impacts on the public, Global Witness will continue to shed light on cases involving anonymous companies in procurement.   It is essential to demonstrate the need for legislation that mandates the collection, and publication, of beneficial ownership information in government contracting.   This is critical because companies with hidden owners are one of the most important vehicles for bribery, money laundering, tax evasion, sanctions busting, drug trafficking, and other forms of crime and corruption around the world.   * Access the interactive map via the link below. Visit the related web page
	Ford Foundation’s #InequalityIs Discussion: Free-flowing Snippets of Mad, Sad & Data by Ruth McCambridge Non-Profit Quarterly   A few weeks ago, Darren Walker of the Ford Foundation announced an online exhibition of sorts on inequality, seeding the space with some videos. At the same time, he sent out a request for people to contribute to a Twitter “conversation” using the hashtag #InequalityIs.   We thought we’d visit there yesterday to see what the response was, but we never made it to the bottom of the long stream of civil society tweets—befittingly from all over the world. We encourage you to go to browse and participate yourselves.   The tweets speak to the variety of ways that inequality shows up in education, water availability, the environment, housing, policing and criminal justice, employment and wages, access to Internet and other technology, and reproductive rights, to name a few.   Of course, it is Twitter, so calling it a conversation is a stretch. It is more just snippets of sadness, data and commitment to change, but with a central energy flowing through it all. Visit the link below to follow #InequalityIs Visit the related web page
	View more stories