John Christensen reports on the TJN blog on yesterday's launch of the new Foreign Office film on corruption. As he says:

The film is a welcome initiative, and the launch offered a useful opportunity for discussion about the UK's role in tackling corrupt practices. However, the focus of both the film and the discussion at the launch was largely on bribery of public officials and embezzlement by kleptomaniacs, and no mention was made about the role of financial intermediaries and Western firms using their political power to extract fiscal incentives from developing countries, or using offshore finance centres to operate trade mispricing schemes for profits laundering purposes.

He concludes:

We cannot pretend that the proliferation of new statutes and agencies in recent years will be adequate to tackling the supply side of corruption without taking robust measures to scrap offshore secrecy. It is time to recognise that legitimate business has no need for secrecy. On the other hand, countries that allow non-transparent corporate structures and secret trusts are inviting criminality.

Far too much of that criminality takes place on the Foreign Office watch and under the protection of the UK. Our newly passed company law reforms do not tackle this issue. And the Crown Dependencies have turned the supply of services to facilitate corruption into their main economic activity. It's time the UK government work up, and not just smelt the coffee (John gave them a sharp shot of that last night) but actually did something about this.