Rick Rowden, senior economist at the Global Financial Integrity, discusses trade misinvoicing and how it facilitates illicit financial flows (IFFs) and the magnitude and scale of the phenomenon in this video produced by APMDD in collaboration with the Financial Transparency Center (FTC) intended to be used for various training activities of APMDD and its members.
Rick Rowden, Senior Economist at the Global Financial Integrity discusses trade misinvoicing and how it facilitates illicit financial flows (IFFs) and the magnitude and scale of the phenomenon.
Trade misinvoicing happens when “importers and exporters… falsify the value of their cargo or the shipment when they submit their invoices to their customs authorities in their countries,” Rowden explained. “The two common ways of people moving money illicitly into the country are to underprice their imports or overprice their exports.”
“A huge amount of trade which is not formally being taxed properly… Governments on both sides, both countries that are involved in the trade, are not collecting the proper amount of trade taxes that are due to them,” he stressed.
This video was piloted during a three-session training on IFFs, Trade, and Tax Justice Advocacy on October 28-30, 2020 organized by the Asian Peoples Movement on Debt and Development and ActionAid Vietnam to strengthen knowledge, capacity, and cooperation among Asian civil society organizations on campaigns and advocacies surrounding issues on global finance, tax, and trade. The training gathered close to 20 researchers, campaigners, and activists representing local, grassroots, national, regional, and international organizations in Asia.