Like Switzerland, Singapore is a country ranked among the least corrupt in the world that is simultaneously accused of facilitating cross-border crime and tax evasion on an industrial scale. The 2022 Corruption Perceptions Index of Transparency International (TI) ranked Singapore the fifth cleanest country worldwide. Nonetheless, Tax Justice Network (TJN) ranked Singapore the ninth most egregious corporate tax haven in the world and the third most secretive. This presentation considers the history, current political settlement and regional role of Singapore as a conduit for cross-border flows of dirty money as well as international pressures for reform.
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Speaker and Chair Biographies:
Joe Studwell (BA, MPhil, PhD) is currently finishing a book about the history of economic and institutional development in Africa, where he has been researching for the past four years. He is Senior Visiting Fellow at the UK’s Overseas Development Institute (ODI). Joe worked as a journalist and author in east Asia for 25 years. He was the founding editor of the China Economic Quarterly and founder of the Asian research firm Dragonomics, now GaveKal Dragonomics. Joe is the author of three books about East Asia: The China Dream: the Quest for the Greatest Untapped Market on Earth (2002); Asian Godfathers: Money and Power in Hong Kong and South-East Asia (2007); and How Asia Works: Success and Failure in the World’s Most Dynamic Region (2013). The latter two books were long-listed for the Financial Times Business Book of the Year. How Asia Works was an Economist book of the year; Bill Gates described it as one of his favourite works on economic development.
Prof. John Sidel is Director of the Saw Swee Hock Southeast Asia Centre, and the Sir Patrick Gillam Professor of International and Comparative Politics at the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE). Professor Sidel received his BA and MA from Yale University and his PhD from Cornell University. He is the author of Capital, Coercion, and Crime: Bossism in the Philippines (1999), Philippine Politics and Society in the Twentieth Century: Colonial Legacies, Postcolonial Trajectories (2000), Riots, Pogroms, Jihad: Religious Violence in Indonesia (2006), The Islamist Threat in Southeast Asia: A Reassessment (2007), Thinking and Working Politically in Development: Coalitions for Change in the Philippines (2020, with Jaime Faustino) and Republicanism, Communism, Islam: Cosmopolitan Origins of Revolution in Southeast Asia (2021).