Event description
Illicit financial flows (IFFs) impose substantial fiscal, governance, and development costs, yet remain stubbornly hard to measure. Dominant flow-based estimation techniques are constrained by the level of aggregation at which trade, investment, and banking data are publicly available, and rarely identify the actors, channels, or jurisdictions driving risk in a given country. A complementary research programme has emerged over the past decade that combines regulatory risk indicators (banking secrecy, beneficial ownership opacity, corporate tax haven characteristics) with bilateral economic data to produce country-specific vulnerability assessments, and that exploits large-scale micro-data such as corporate ownership registries, leaks, sanctions lists, and country-by-country reports to reconstruct the stocks and structures through which illicit flows are routed. Recent work has begun to integrate these strands, opening the prospect of ultimate-actor-level assessments of IFF risk across FDI, trade, banking, and portfolio investment.
This one-day workshop marks the conclusion of the project A Dynamic Global Dashboard of Illicit Finance Vulnerabilities, which has produced new methods and datasets for mapping the pathways, actors, and structural risks that underpin IFFs. The project responds to a long-standing limitation in the IFF literature: most existing estimates lack the granularity required to identify which channels, partners, and ultimate actors generate the bulk of risk in a given country, and therefore cannot reliably inform the allocation of audit, investigative, or regulatory resources.
The event will launch Tax Justice Network’s new Global Dashboard of Illicit Finance Vulnerabilities and disseminate further findings of the project. It also aims to provide a forum for researchers and policy makers in the field to convene, discuss new evidence and their policy implications, strengthen the practitioner network, and identify priorities for the next phase of IFF research, including work on confidential administrative micro-data as part of the Admin Data for Tax Justice initiative.
Confirmed speakers include Daniel Haberly (University of Sussex), Miroslav Palanský (Charles University and Tax Justice Network), Ronen Palan (City St George’s, University of London), Moran Harari (Tax Justice Network), and Tijmen Tuinsma (Tax Justice Network). Lunch and refreshments will be provided, and we end the day with a dinner for presenters. There is no registration fee, but places are limited. Should interest exceed capacity, we will select participants based on the relevance and fit of their work with the workshop’s themes.
What we are looking for
We invite researchers and practitioners in illicit finance to contribute to the workshop by presenting their work or by attending and participating in discussions. For presentations, we welcome theoretical, empirical, methodological, and policy-relevant contributions across the field. Topics may include, but are not limited to,
- the measurement of IFF risk and vulnerability;
- offshore investment structures and sanctioned financial networks;
- beneficial ownership and ultimate-actor analysis;
- how governments can use risk-based tools to prioritise interventions and assess transparency reforms such as beneficial ownership registers, exchange of information, and country-by-country reporting.
Both completed studies and work in progress are welcome, and we especially encourage submissions from early-career researchers. Please fill in this form to submit your contribution or indicate your interest in attending without presenting. There is no funding available to cover travel, accommodation, or other expenses related to attending. The deadline for submissions is 31 July, with decisions communicated by early August. If you have any questions, feel free to reach out to [email protected].