Illicit financial flows and their impacts on development: A way forward

Raymond Baker is the director of Global Financial Integrity, a think tank in Washington, DC, a guest scholar at the Brookings Institution and Senior Fellow at the Center for International Policy,

Mr. Baker is the author of "Capitalism’s Achilles Heel: Dirty Money and How to Renew the Free-Market System." He has for many years been an internationally respected authority on corruption, money laundering, growth, and foreign policy issues, particularly as they concern developing and transitional economies and impact upon western economic and foreign interests.

In 1996 Raymond Baker received a grant from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation for a project entitled, “Flight Capital, Poverty and Free-Market Economics.” The project took him to 23 countries where he interviewed over 335 bankers, politicians, government officials, economists, attorneys, tax collectors, security officers, and social scientists on the relationships between commercial tax evasion, bribery, money laundering, and economic growth.

In January 2009, Mr. Baker brought together a coalition of research and advocacy organizations and over 50 governments to form the Task Force on Financial Integrity and Economic Development - an organization which advocates for transparency in the global financial system.

Mr. Baker is also the author of The Biggest Loophole in the Free-Market System, Illegal Flight Capital; Dangers for Global Stability, How Dirty Money Binds the Poor.