The BRICS grouping of emerging market nations is leading the flight of illicit capital from the developing world, according to data in a new report released this week.
In its annual estimate of illegal capital flows, Washington-based think tank Global Financial Integrity (GFI) said a record US$991 billion was siphoned in 2012 from the world’s developing economies, an increase of almost 5 percent from 2011.
Illicit capital incorporates such things as misinvoicing of trade whereby exports and imports are booked at different values to avoid taxes or to hide large transfers of money
The report said that from 2003 to 2012, US$6.6 trillion was moved by crooked means out of emerging economies, finding its way to bank accounts in the developed world or far-flung tax havens.
Of that total, about US$3 trillion or almost half was diverted from the BRICS group — Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa. China, the world’s second-biggest economy, lead the way with an estimated US$1.25 trillion leaving its borders illegally over the course of the decade.
Russia is the second-biggest exporter of illicit money, India is fourth, Brazil seventh and South Africa is 12th, the report said.
The BRICS group is trying to assert itself on the global stage as a counterweight to the traditional economic power blocks of North America, western Europe and Japan.
“There are questions about the commitment to financial transparency among the BRICS consortia, especially among some of the bigger members,” GFI president Raymond Baker said in an interview.
Overall, the amount of capital spirited out of the world’s developing countries in 2012 was 1.3 times higher than the amount of foreign direct investment they received that year and topped aid flows by over a thousand-fold.
Trade misinvoicing remained the biggest channel for illegally moving capital offshore, accounting for almost 78 percent of illicit flows.
The issue of capital flight from the developing world has been in the spotlight in recent years, as the missing funds could have been spent on education, health and other key areas.
This has lead to calls to tighten the noose on tax havens and tackle trade misinvoicing.
Some development economists have said sub-Saharan Africa, where illicit cash outflows equal about 5.5 percent of its GDP — is, contrary to popular belief, actually a net exporter of capital to the rest of the world because of such activities.
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”
Sales in the retail, and food and beverage sectors last month continued to rise, increasing 0.7 percent and 13.6 percent respectively from a year earlier, setting record highs for the month of March, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday. Sales in the wholesale sector also grew last month by 4.6 annually, mainly due to the business opportunities for emerging applications related to artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing technologies, the ministry said in a report. The ministry forecast that retail, and food and beverage sales this month would retain their growth momentum as the former would benefit from Tomb Sweeping Day
Thousands of parents in Singapore are furious after a Cordlife Group Ltd (康盛人生集團), a major operator of cord blood banks in Asia, irreparably damaged their children’s samples through improper handling, with some now pursuing legal action. The ongoing case, one of the worst to hit the largely untested industry, has renewed concerns over companies marketing themselves to anxious parents with mostly unproven assurances. This has implications across the region, given Cordlife’s operations in Hong Kong, Macau, Indonesia, the Philippines and India. The parents paid for years to have their infants’ cord blood stored, with the understanding that the stem cells they contained