New Statistical Horizons: the Benefits and Challenges of Measuring Illicit Financial Flows

Date: Tuesday 27 September 2022, 1.30PM
Location: Online
Online - joining instructions will be sent to those registered
Section Group Meeting

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Illicit financial flows (IFFs), whether linked to corruption, money laundering or tax evasion, are a key obstacle to international development efforts. The UN has set the goal to significantly reduce IFFs by 2030. Yet, measuring IFFs is challenging, both for definitional and practical reasons. This session will showcase global and national efforts to measure various types of IFFs, and promote experience-sharing on this rapidly evolving area of statistics.
 
Illicit financial flows (‘IFFs’) can take many shapes, ranging from bribery or payments for illicit goods to cross-border money laundering or tax evasion schemes. Regardless of the specific type, IFFs undermine international development efforts by affecting security and diverting critical funds from their intended purpose. In line with Sustainable Development Goal 16, the UN has set the target of significantly reducing IFFs by 2030.

From a statistical point of view, IFFs raise a range of conceptual and practical challenges linked, for example, to grey zones in determining whether flows are illicit or not (e.g. tax evasion vs tax avoidance), to the cross-border dimension of most IFFs, or to the inherent difficulty in detecting offences such as bribery that often involve two complicit parties.
This webinar aims to raise awareness about available methods to measure IFFs, both at the global and national levels, and to overcome remaining challenges. Speakers will address UN efforts on a Conceptual Framework for the Statistical Measurement of IFFs as well as case studies from Italy, the Maldives, Mexico and Zambia. The presentations will be followed by a Q&A.
 
 
Panel Chair:
  • Dr. Angela Me, Chief, Research and Trend Analysis Branch, United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC)
 
Speakers:
  • Mr. Oscar Jaimes, Director General, Directorate for Government, Security and Justice Statistics, National Institute of Statistics and Geography (INEGI), Mexico
  • Mr. Katuna Sinyangwe, Financial Intelligence Centre (FIC), Zambia
  • Mr. Claudio Pauselli, Senior Data Analyst, Financial Intelligence Unit (UIF), Italy
 
Olivier Kraft for RSS International Development Section