On the 23rd of September, Policy Forum's Budget Working Group (BWG) was invited by Forum Syd and Svenska Institutet to present at a breakfast seminar in Sweden on illicit capital flight from poor countries, how it affects development, and how it can be stopped. The presentation centred on a new report on the subject of which the BWG co-authored.
Entitled "Bringing the Billions Back: How Africa and Europe can End Illicit Capital Flight," the report explains illicit capital flight, how it happens, its magnitude, its consequences for the poor, and measures needed to end it. The BWG presentation was delivered by its convenor, Moses Kulaba.
Other speakers at the seminar were Kristina Fröberg, a political scientist and an advocacy officer at Forum Syd, a network of nearly 200 Swedish civil society organisations collaborating for global justice, and Dr. Attiya Waris, a lecturer at the School of Law at the University of Nairobi as well a member of the OECD Task Force on Tax and Development and vice chair of the Tax Justice Network.
Capital flight has been called "the ugliest chapter in global economic affairs since slavery". Every year unreported flows of money amounting to as much as ten times the value of global development aid leave poor countries and end up in rich countries and tax havens. Multinational companies evading taxes are responsible for most of this capital flight.