Trapped in illicit finance

The world faces some of the most serious economic, environmental, social and political challenges it ever has. Across the world, citizens are calling for governments to implement policies to address these issues. Again, and again, governments tell them the same thing: “we don’t have the money”.

At the same time, it’s a fact that governments worldwide tolerate widespread tax evasion and avoidance – and that malevolent actors routinely steal from government funds. Indeed, it is estimated that $416bn is lost every year to illicit financial flows (IFFs) – illegal or harmful movements of money or capital from one country to another.

In this report, Christian Aid and our partners propose a simple solution for plugging some of this funding gap: we must stop tolerating the abusive, unethical and immoral IFFs that rob the poor to enrich the wealthy.