The WCO is pleased to announce that the Study Report on Illicit Financial Flows via Trade Mis-invoicing (IFFs) is now available for public consultation. The Report is the result of a successful collaboration between the WCO Secretariat, academic, intergovernmental and industry experts and a few Customs Administrations who provided key data to the Secretariat.
The Report was endorsed by the WCO Council in June and subsequently presented to the G20 Development Working Group in July 2018, which had originally tasked the WCO with the composition of a report during the 2016 Hangzhou Summit.
The Report contains an overview of the current methods employed in assessing the magnitude of IFFs via Trade Mis-invoicing - the Price Filter Method (PFM) and Partner Country Method (PCM)- and features pioneering research from Global Financial Integrity and Central Michigan and Pennsylvania State universities. Additional contributions on inter-agency cooperation, best practices from the Korean Customs Administration and new technologies such as Blockchain provide a comprehensive account of the scale of IFFs and their wide-ranging impact. In keeping with the findings of the Report, the WCO is advocating for increased resources and an enhanced mandate for its Members to ensure that Customs are adequately equipped to tackle the issue of IFFs and trade mis-invoicing.
Read the full report here, hard copies available upon request.