A bank you’ve probably never heard of, the Bank for International Settlements, has data on the secret billions held in tax havens which would be invaluable in the fight against corruption and global poverty. But there’s just one problem. They won’t make it public.
The international campaigning and advocacy organization ONE is campaigning for the Bank for International Settlements to reveal its data on international tax havens. Releasing this data would help citizens and transparency campaigners follow the money, root out corruption and ensure that resources are used to fight extreme poverty rather than lost to dodgy deals.
While the corruption at HSBC's Swiss Bank was revealed by whistleblower Hervé Falciani, a former employee of the bank, the BIS (French: Banque des règlements internationaux, BRI), an international organization of central banks based in Basel, has produced data on the staggering amount of money held in tax havens. The Africa Progress Panel found that the Democratic Republic of Congo lost over $1.3bn – or almost twice its combined health and education budgets – between 2010 and 2012 as a result of just five dodgy mining deals struck by firms incorporated in the British Virgin Islands, and companies based in Bermuda, Jersey, Gibraltar and the UK.
You can join the campaign and call on the Bank for International Settlements, and its chairman Christian Noyer, to release the data.
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