Global Witness to testify at Financial Services Committee Congressional Hearing
WASHINGTON DC: Some of the world's major banks, including Barclays and Citibank, have been facilitating corruption and undermining development in some of the worst-governed countries in the world, campaigning organisation Global Witness will testify to the U.S. House of Representatives' Financial Services Committee today (May 19).
Global Witness lead investigator, Anthea Lawson, will tell Committee members, including Chairman Barney Frank, that a catalogue of failures in the design and enforcement of anti-money laundering laws has enabled banks to help politicians from some of the world's most corrupt regimes to use government money to fund lavish lifestyles, while their populations live in poverty.
"The key factors allowing banks to do business with corrupt regimes are precisely those which allowed banks to destabilize the U.S. and other major economies […] People now agree that we need to reassess the way we regulate banks. We must also take this opportunity to tackle the way banks facilitate corruption, and thus help fuel poverty," said Ms Lawson.
