In Liberia closing the loop on illicit financial flow
- Liberia: IREDD, 2014.
- 46p
From 2003 to present, Liberia has seen an amazing infusion of foreign direct investment opportunities resulting to the injection of more than US$16 billion, with 65% of this amount being realized from the extractive industry, basically in the mining, forestry, agriculture and oil sectors. Despite such huge investments, the gap between the haves and the haves not remains ever widening, and the hope of middle class development lingers increasingly with uncertainty (Afrobarometer, 2012). At the heart of this problem rests the nagging issue of illicit financial flows. IFFs have become a growing and pressing domestic and international challenge for Liberia and other African governments in the last 30 years. As governments struggle with the challenge of promoting structural transformation in their respective countries, it is evident that states continue to lose billions of dollars every year to illicit financial transactions through money laundering, tax evasion, mispricing, corruption and bribery. This report delves specifically into critical issues that drive IFFs, and, through an extensive research process that takes into account primary and secondary research methodologies, policy makers and other stakeholders are provided rare insight into the ‘hows’ and ‘whys’ IFFs thrive in the Liberian extractive sector.
