Tax Justice Network

In this extended special episode of the Taxcast, we look at the 'Desai Leaks' - the story you probably never heard of: it goes back decades and looks at a key player in the making of tax haven Mauritius that's been hurting Indians and Africans ever since.

We speak with a whistleblower and the journalist who broke the story. Is the Indian government investigating? What does the story tell us about the global economy?

Transcript available here (some is automated) https://taxjustice.net/wp-content/uploads/2023/01/The-Taxcast-Transcript-Jan-2023.pdf 

Our website is https:///www.thetaxcast.com 

There's been a shift in global power, a tax justice milestone, and the powerful nations couldn't stop it...

In this episode, Naomi Fowler gives you a fly-on-the-wall take on what happened at the United Nations on November 24th 2022. We look at the power plays around a fundamental global power shift - the beginning of the end of the OECD’s 60 year reign as the world’s leading rule-maker on global tax.

Featuring:

Alex Cobham of the Tax Justice Network

Rachel Etter-Phoya of the Tax Justice Network

The UN Chairperson, UN Secretary and UN representatives of Nigeria, South Africa, the United States, the United Kingdom, Singapore, Liechtenstein, Republic of Korea, and Eritrea. 

Produced and hosted by the Tax Justice Network's Naomi Fowler.

Transcript (some is automated) https://taxjustice.net/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/The-Taxcast_Transcript_Dec_22.pdf

WATCH this historic UN meeting here (starts about 20 minutes in): https://media.un.org/en/asset/k1b/k1bummpe5z 

Further reading:

https://taxjustice.net/2022/11/22/%f0%9f%94%b4-live-blog-un-vote-on-new-tax-leadership-role/

https://taxjustice.net/2022/12/15/un-resolution-for-an-intergovernmental-tax-framework-what-does-it-mean-and-whats-next/

https://taxjustice.net/press/un-adopts-historic-decision-to-take-on-new-tax-leadership/

https://taxjustice.net/press/un-secretary-general-signals-support-for-un-tax-convention/ 

Our podcast website is https://www.thetaxcast.com 

In this episode, Taxcast host Naomi Fowler discusses sovereignty, the 'boomerang effect' and the relevance of the 'Third World Movement' today to our global economic system, with Dr Kojo Koram, author of Uncommon Wealth: Britain and the Aftermath of Empire. "Decolonisation, from the 1950s and 1970s, was quite simply the greatest multiplication of democratic power that the world has ever seen"

Plus, we look at two big failures this month:

• the collapse of crypto exchange company FTX (secrecy jurisdictions, enablers, investigations...)
• the Tax Justice Network writes an open letter to alert the G20 to the failings of the OECD as global tax rule-setter, as they miss another deadline.

A transcript of the podcast is available here: (Some is automated) https://taxjustice.net/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/The-Taxcast-transcript-Nov-22-1.pdf

"The kind of loss of feeling of control in the United Kingdom, that loss of feeling of sovereignty, that loss of feeling of democratic accountability is connected to the erosion of sovereignty and erosion of democratic accountability that was allowed to happen to the former colonies of particularly the British Empire but all empires. What happens in the colonies doesn't simply stay there, but it comes back on the homeland and it starts to impact how its economy, its society, and its politics operates. And I think that's a lot of what we see in Britain right up until today.”

Featuring:

• Dr Kojo Koram of Birkbeck, University of London and author of Uncommon Wealth: Britain and the Aftermath of Empire.
• Alex Cobham, Tax Justice Network
• Professor Nouriel Roubini speaking in the UAE
• Taxcast host and producer, Naomi Fowler, Tax Justice Network

Further reading:

• Kojo Koram's book Uncommon Wealth: Britain and the Aftermath of Empire is published by John Murray Press: https://uk.bookshop.org/books/uncommon-wealth-britain-and-the-aftermath-of-empire/9781529338621 
• Governments can recover billions from tax havens by publishing withheld transparency data https://taxjustice.net/press/governments-can-recover-billions-from-tax-havens-by-publishing-withheld-transparency-data/ 
• UN Secretary General signals support for UN tax convention: https://taxjustice.net/press/un-secretary-general-signals-support-for-un-tax-convention/ 
• Tax Justice Network's Open letter to G20 on OECD failure to deliver on G20 mandates https://taxjustice.net/2022/11/15/open-letter-to-g20-oecd-failure-to-deliver-on-g20-mandates/
• Why Didn't the Government Stop the Crypto Scam? by Matt Stoller: https://mattstoller.substack.com/p/why-didnt-the-government-stop-the 
• The World Series of Crypto Rackets, by Judd Legum: https://t.co/wEh4TihGYz
• Seven politicians are returning FTX's tainted money — others are keeping quiet, by Judd Legum and Rebecca Crosby: https://popular.info/p/seven-politicians-are-returning-ftxs 

WATCH ~ BOOMERANG: Empire and Britain's economy (featuring Kojo Koram): https://youtu.be/kmOK4tNc31A