Dagmar Frank announces the winner of W-T-W.org Women and Finance Cartoon of the Year.
Congratulations to Heinz Schwarze-Blanke for fighting corruption with “Money Laundering” Supervisory Board. On a website dedicated in part to the definition and exploration of corruption, Heinz Schwarze-Blanke’s subtle, portrayal of corruption’s insidious role in society highlights the problem with a cruel grace.
Heinz Schwarze-Blanke
Welcome to Davos 2018
Welcome to this year’s Davos live blog. We’ll be bringing you highlights from the key sessions, commentary from around the globe, and some of the bits you might have missed. The live blog team will guide you through the meeting, from today, all the way through to the finish on Friday.
The doors might not yet be open officially, but here’s what you need to know before we get going.
Why 2018 must be the year for women to thrive
Leaders from around the world are meeting in Davos at a time of global economic recovery, a time when governments must do all they can to sustain this momentum and lay the foundations for long-term growth. Helping women make the most of their potential is a key part of this equation.
Time is up for discrimination and abuse against women. The time has come for women to thrive.
@wef
Giant Leak of Offshore Financial Records Exposes Global Array of Crime and Corruption
Millions of documents show heads of state, criminals and celebrities using secret hideaways in tax havens…ICIJ
Tax-avoidance schemes are being offered up to the wealthy like vacation packages
Rosie Perper, Business Insider reports: Tax-avoidance schemes, that include creating offshore accounts in tax-free countries, are being offered to the wealthy like vacation packages. A screenshot of the TMS Group’s “International Business Company Packages” page shows several plans — called “The Indian Ocean,” “The Caribbean,” and “The Oasis” — being offered to businesses or individuals shopping around for the best place to open up an offshore account.
Two of the packages promote setting up a company in one country, then creating a business address and offshore bank account in two more countries. Seychelles and Belize are offered as possible locations for the company set-up, while Malaysia is the chosen country for business addresses.
Another site, Offshore Desk, offers an €1890 ($2,300 USD) “Seychelles Package,” allowing taxpayers of any country to incorporate a business in Seychelles and a bank account in Cyprus. Similar packages for offshore accounts in Vanuatu and Delaware, are shown on the site accompanied by flashy photos and low-cost promises.
Information obtained from the leaked Panama Papers showed offshore accounts were, in some cases, used to avoid taxes, conceal transactions, and launder money.
panamapapers.icij.org
The global context has changed dramatically: geostrategic fissures have re-emerged on multiple fronts with wide-ranging political, economic and social consequences. Realpolitik is no longer just a relic of the Cold War. Economic prosperity and social cohesion are not one and the same. The global commons cannot protect or heal itself.
Politically, new and divisive narratives are transforming governance. Economically, policies are being formulated to preserve the benefits of global integration while limiting shared obligations such as sustainable development, inclusive growth and managing the Fourth Industrial Revolution. Socially, citizens yearn for responsive leadership; yet, a collective purpose remains elusive despite ever-expanding social networks. All the while, the social contract between states and their citizens continues to erode.
Surgical Comb-Over
Silvan Wegmann
www.w-t-w.org/en/silvan-wegmann
LIVE: OECD
20 Years of the Anti-Bribery Convention:
Successes and Challenges
The-Detection-of-Foreign-Bribery
The OECD Anti-Bribery Convention focuses on enforcement through the criminalisation of foreign bribery but it is multidisciplinary and includes key requirements to combat money laundering, accounting fraud, and tax evasion connected to foreign bribery.
The first step, however, in enforcing foreign bribery and related offences is effective detection. This study looks at the primary sources of detection for the foreign bribery offence and the role that certain public agencies and private sector actors can play in uncovering this crime. It examines the practices developed in different sectors and countries which have led to the successful detection of foreign bribery with a view to sharing good practices and improving countries’ capacity to detect and ultimately step-up efforts against transnational bribery.
This study was undertaken by the OECD Working Group on Bribery which brings together the 43 countries party to the Anti-Bribery Convention.
The report was launched on 12 December 2017 at a Roundtable on 20 years of the Anti-Bribery Convention.
WE-FI is open for Business: Octobre 12. 2017
The Women Entrepreneurs Finance Initiative (We-Fi) is pleased to announce its first call for proposals. Up to $150m of grant financing is available for this call.
The objective of the We-Fi is to address financial and non-financial constraints faced by women-owned/led small and medium enterprises (SMEs) in IDA and IBRD eligible countries and territories. The We-Fi aims to achieve this by mobilizing more than $1 billion in commercial and international financial institution (IFI) finance for entities that provide women entrepreneurs with access to debt, equity, venture capital, insurance products, capacity building, networks and mentors, and opportunities to link with domestic and global markets; and for governments to improve the business environment for women-owned/led SMEs.
WeFi-CallforProposals-Oct17
Women Entrepreneurs Finance Initiative Statement
Women Entrepreneurs Finance Initiative- We-Fi
http://www.financialbuzz.com/we-fi-for-business-905256
All over the developing world, women have successfully made it in business. But they are a small group of women — only 30 percent of formal small and medium enterprises (SMEs) around the world are owned and run by women. Seventy percent of formal women-owned SMEs in developing countries are either shut out of financial institutions or can’t get the capital they need.
This results in a nearly $300 billion annual credit deficit for formal women-owned SMEs. It is nearly impossible to sustain a business without access to capital. Lack of networks, knowledge, and links to high value markets further limit female entrepreneurship in developing countries.
We-Fi intends to change those statistics. Its holistic approach will help women in developing countries gain increased access to the finance, markets, and networks necessary to start and grow a business.
Daphne Caruana Galizia leading journalist of the Panama Papers investigation in Malta was killed by a car bomb Galizia car exploded Monday afternoon as she left her home in a town outside Malta’s capital, Valetta.
Galizia had been leading the Panama Papers investigation into corruption in Malta, according to The Guardian, and was even described by Politico as a “one-woman WikiLeaks” who was “shaping, shaking and stirring” Europe with her reports.
The Panama Papers refer to the 11.5 million documents that were leaked from large offshore law firm Mossack Fonseca in 2015. Galizia is survived by her husband and three sons, The Guardian reported.
Journalists Daphne Caruana Galizia Final Words
New World Bank Group Facility to Enable more than $1 billion for Women Entrepreneurship.
To help unlock the potential of women entrepreneurs, the new Women Entrepreneurs Finance Initiative We-Fi will enable more than $1 billion in financing to improve access to capital, provide technical assistance, and invest in projects and programs that support women and women-led SMEs in World Bank Group client countries.
Women Entrepreneurs Face Many Challenges
The competent committee, which will determine the operational measures of the Facility and the award criteria, will meet for the first time this October.
Notes to Worldbank Editors
Cartoon courtesy of Peter Lewis and the Newcastle Herald
www.livecaricatures.com.au
The exchange BTC-e is alleged to have facilitated cybercrime, drug trafficking and payments to corrupt officials.
Bitcoin: A Russian man has been arrested in Greece on suspicion of laundering more than £3bn as part of a Bitcoin exchange allowing users to trade the digital cash…
Accused of Laundering 3bn in Bitcoin
Reuters.com
FinCEN fines BTC-e $110 million for violating anti-money laundering laws.
One of the largest digital currency traders in the world has been assessed a $110 million dollar civil money penalty by the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) and the U.S. Attorney’s Office of the Northern District of California.
BTC-e, or Canton Business Corporation (BTC-e), was the target of the Treasury’s first action against a foreign-located money services business for knowingly violating U.S. anti-money laundering (AML) laws, and was hit with a $110,003,314 penalty. The company was also complicit in their facilitation of digital transactions involving “ransomware, computer hacking, identity theft, tax refund fraud schemes, public corruption, and drug trafficking,” according to an official statement.
BTC-e is an online, foreign-based money transmitter that takes fiat currency and virtually all popular cryptocurrencies, including Bitcoin, Litecoin, Namecoin, Novacoin, Peercoin, Ethereum, and Dash. The company processed over $300,000 in bitcoin stolen from Mt. Gox, one of the world’s largest bitcoin exchanges, from 2011 to 2014, and over $296 million in bitcoin in total. The company also facilitated at least $3 million in transactions related to ransomware operations dubbed “Cryptolocker” and “Locky”, in addition to sharing customers and conducting transactions with the since-dead money laundering website Liberty Reserve.
“We will hold accountable foreign-located money transmitters, including virtual currency exchangers, that do business in the United States when they willfully violate U.S. anti-money laundering laws,” said Jamal El-Hindi, Acting Director for FinCEN in the statement. “This action should be a strong deterrent to anyone who thinks that they can facilitate ransomware, dark net drug sales, or conduct other illicit activity using encrypted virtual currency.
The facilities of BTC-e were seized by various law enforcement agencies, including the IRS-Criminal Investigation Division, FBI, Department of Homeland Security and Secret Service. One of BTC-e’s operators, Russian national Alexander Vinnik, was also arrested in Greece this week and assessed a $12 million fine.
BTC-e’s transactions included funds sent and received domestically, despite the company being foreign-based and masking their geographic location and ownership.
The failure to comply with U.S. AML laws and regulations necessitated law enforcement action, and BTC-e’s civil money penalty represents “the second supervisory enforcement action FinCEN has taken against a business that operates as an exchanger of virtual currency, and the first it has taken against a foreign-located MSB doing business in the United States,” according to the statement.
G20 – a meeting at the highest level
The G20 Summit in Hamburg on 7 and 8 July 2017 will be a meeting at the highest level. Its participants will include the world’s major economic players, the two countries with the largest populations in the world, the world’s biggest island country and the most important international institutions on the planet. But who are these participants of the G20 Summit in Hamburg? Twitter.com/RegSprecher
G20 Womens Entrepreneurship
The G20 also seeks to improve women’s economic empowerment. The G20 thus agreed on the goal of improving labour force participation among women and reducing the gap that still exists in this respect between men and women by 25% by 2025. Germany’s G20 Presidency will build on that and focus on improving the quality of women’s employment. The German G20 Presidency will also work to remove the existing barriers which prevent women from gaining access to information and communications technology in developing countries and to improve education and employment prospects in the field of ICT.
Financial inclusion
Promoting female entrepreneurship and access to finance for womenThe G20 has not yet fully acknowledged the potential of entrepreneurship as another driver of growth. Female entrepreneurship as well as women’s access to finance, including full legal capacity for all women, should therefore be promoted by improving access to credit and investor networks, training, information services and technical support.
Women20 urges the G20 to:
Suppression of Corruption on G20 Agenda
With a view to combating international terrorism, the G20 states have decided among other things to dry up channels of terrorist financing by means of closer cooperation and improved exchange of information. Since 2009, the prevention and suppression of corruption has also been on the G20 agenda. The G20 has since been working consistently to expand its existing body of principles. Under the German Presidency, the focus is on measures to improve public sector integrity and the common search for ways to fight corruption in particularly susceptible areas. G20-Anti Corruption
