Events

Statistics on foreign bank accounts: Use for developing countries 1 October, 2020

Close to 100 countries have been engaging in automatic exchange of bank account information based on the OECD's Common Reporting Standard (CRS). However, exchanges are confidential, so civil society organisations are unable to estimate foreign account holdings or hold authorities to account for how they use the information. On top of this, not all countries are able to join the automatic exchange system.

In this backdrop, the Financial Transparency Coalition has been calling for countries to publish statistics on automatic exchanges. Thanks to the research and advocacy by civil society organisations, Australia and Germany have published very useful statistics. The webinar explored how to use these statistics both to detect undeclared money but also to find mistakes and schemes involving tax havens. It also suggested measures for how countries which are excluded from the automatic system may try to obtain at least some foreign account information.

Please find the presentation made by Andres Knobel here and video recording of the webinar here.