Podcasts & Interviews
Essays & Writings
Secrecy Is a Scourge on Finance. How to Bring Hidden Wealth Into the Light.
With secrecy firmly entrenched in modern capitalism, our economic system is functionally beyond oversight by anyone. Eliminating secrecy in the form of anonymous companies is a necessary step in strengthening the democratic capitalist system.
Barron’s, January 31, 2023
Illicit Money: Can It Be Stopped?
The [Obama] administration is largely missing a far more devastating problem related to offshore finance: money gained from criminal and other illicit sources. With the use of tax havens and other elements of an increasingly complex “shadow” financial network, vast sums of illegal money are being shifted throughout the global economy virtually undetected.
New York Review of Books
India Shows Us the Curse of ‘Black Money’
Until efforts are made to dismantle the shadow financial system and mandate more co-operative and rigorous reporting, success will remain as elusive as India’s missing black money. India has shown that this issue resonates with voters. Politicians in other developing country democracies would be wise to take note.
Financial Times
From Foreign Aid to Legitimate Trade: How to Finance Development
Plastic buckets from the Czech Republic at $970 each? Brown sugar from Turkey going for $240 per pound? Or weed whackers shipped to Venezuela at $12,300 apiece? These are all examples of the troubling and growing phenomenon known as trade misinvoicing — the fraudulent over- and under-invoicing of international trade transactions to secretly move money, covering the proceeds of crime, corruption, and tax evasion.
Thomson Reuters Foundation
Take Dirty Money Off the Table
Money is to criminality as oxygen is to fire. Whether it’s a terrorist, a thug, or a corrupt titan, each depends on the easy flow of dirty money to conduct operations. The first step to mopping up terrorist assets is to address dirty money in all its forms at the same time. This requires laws that criminalize all 200 kinds of dirty money, whether it comes from within the United States or from abroad.
San Francisco Chronicle
The Hunt for Black Money
India has a tremendous opportunity to increase its influence on the world stage. With the second largest population, 10th largest economy, and strategic position among G-20 countries, Prime Minister Narendra Modi can, if he chooses, speak articulately for billions of people struggling for a fair share of the world’s riches.
The Indian Express
How Dirty Money Thwarts Capitalism’s True Course
If smuggling drugs across borders is bad, is smuggling profits across borders through abusive transfer pricing also bad? If tax evasion out of one country is harmful, is the inflow of tax-evading money into another also harmful? If money laundering by terrorists is dangerous, is the use of similar techniques by companies dangerous?
Financial Times
How Dirty Money Binds the Poor
For more than 50 years, the World Bank has committed billions of dollars and the brain power of some of the brightest economists to fighting poverty, and yet outright success has been elusive. Even among World Bank staffers, there is a sense that something is missing that might explain the mystery of why so much development aid has done so little good.
Financial Times
Illicit Financial Flows: The Scourge of the Developing World
For most of my professional life, I owned and operated a number of businesses in Nigeria. My partners and I would find a failing company, buy it out, and rebuild it as an efficient, well-run enterprise that turned a profit. We paid our taxes, refused to participate in bribery or corruption, and created jobs.
I am sad to say that when Nigerians look into the future, they do not see the optimism that I experienced back in the 1960s and ’70s. Their country has been torn apart not just by civil war, but also by the terrible forces of crime, corruption, and tax evasion.
Huffington Post
See this link for a more complete list of articles and speeches.
Video
Raymond Baker spoke on the financial secrecy system at a Yale Global Justice Seminar, October 10, 2023.
Raymond Baker spoke at a DC Forum event on September 21, 2023, “Capitalism Confronting Democracy.” Featured panelists were Larry Diamond, Jennifer Gould, Peter Coy, and Annie Boyajian.
Raymond Baker spoke at Stanford University at an event hosted by the Corporations and Society Initiative, “Unmasking the Financial Secrecy System: How Rogue Capitalism Threatens Capitalism.”
Raymond Baker spoke at the DC Forum conference on February 8, 2023, in Washington, DC. See “The Purpose of the DC Forum” at 6:16 and the Inequality panel at 3:54:08.
Raymond Baker spoke at a plenary session at the International Anti-Corruption Conference on December 9, 2022, in Washington, DC.