EquityBD briefing papers on Tax Justice : Whose money and whose interest? Illicit money flys off Bangladesh

Illicit financial flows are cross-border transfer of funds that are illegally earned, transferred or utilized. It can be generated in a many different ways that are not revealed in national accounts or balance

of payments figures. And it includes trade mispricing, bribery, money laundering, crimes, corruption, smuggling etc. Both companies and individuals can lead this illicit financial flows from one country to

another. The outflow of capital is facilitated by a shadow international financial system, especially offshore financial centres, tax secrecy jurisdictions that is famously known as ‘tax havens’.

More than 200 Multinational companies (MNCs) have been working in Bangladesh and allegedly evading the due taxes through transfer pricing and other tricks and the country is losing a huge amount of

revenue every year. MNCs usually evade taxes through the abuse of transfer pricing or mispricing in different ways including capital flight, transfer of dividend and profit to its permanent establishments

including over and under-invoicing during transactions of goods and services within their associated enterprises