Banking Transparency and Illicit International Transactions

The Global Financial Integrity (GFI) Capstone team was tasked to investigate major instances of banking transparency legislation and regulation in the United States. Given the malign effects of unregulated banking systems worldwide as a source of terrorist financing, a vehicle for white collar crime, and a sinkhole for government revenue, this study aimed to provide the client insights on how, potentially, to lobby more effectively for banking transparency.

Banking transparency reform in the U.S. is infrequent, and does not lend itself to a quantitative survey. Instead, the final report presents a qualitative case study of recent attempted action towards banking transparency. Some of these attempts were successful, while others failed to bring about significant change. A comparison of those cases allows us to identify the actors at play and the factors driving reform. In the final report, the team mapped the forces at play through a snapshot of the arguments and key players in the transparency debate (Part 2) before analyzing the dynamics through which they engage in each of the reform battlegrounds (Part 3), and presenting conclusions and recommendations towards effective advocacy in this context (Part 4).