Below is a blog post on the connection between financial secrecy, taxes and poverty from our partners at Oxfam America. Kathleen Brophy dives deep into an analysis of the sale of a large copper mine in the Democratic Republic of Congo, showing how the Congolese government collected no tax from the $2.65 billion transaction:
"Last week, the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists unveiled a collection of new stories in their latest Panama Papers leak, this time with a focus on Africa. The stories reveal new details about illicit financial flows and the extractive industries, showing how multi-billion dollar oil and mining deals across the continent serve to make the rich even richer while providing no benefits to some of the world’s poorest populations.
So what exactly does this mean? How is it that billions of dollars are being made off of Africa’s natural resources without benefitting African populations? For multinational oil and mineral companies the answer is simple: separate the actual from the transactional."
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