The Coming Wave of Transparency Reform: A Tidal Shift Available to Purchase

Over the past year, a series of international financial scandals have highlighted significant gaps in the global system which seeks to regulate and enforce global norms to protect the integrity of financial markets and services. Some of these scandals, such as the press allegations about billions of dollars being laundered from Russia through the Bank of New York, are still unfolding, and it may be some time before we can draw conclusions about what actually took place. Regardless, the information already public is accelerating already rapidly moving efforts by the USA, the G7 and other key stakeholders in the global system to close those gaps. These efforts do not relate solely to the main regulated financial services industries and to jurisdictions perceived to be underregulated or uncooperative. They also take on the possibility of applying new standards relating to the responsibilities of lawyers, accountants, auditors, company formation agents and notaries to the governments that license them and to their fellow citizens, in addition to those responsibilities they have to the private‐sector clients who have engaged them. The development of these and the other new standards is still in progress and will require intensive consultations in the months to come between governmental institutions and those in the private sector most affected by such standards. But inside the government, the debate is not whether we will build broader protections against financial crime, but how far to go, and whom we will hold responsible for undertaking the work.