The Trillion Dollar Scandal

This often involves money laundering, corrupt deals for natural resources, drug trafficking and much more. If countries could crack down on these deals, recover the money, and tax it at normal rates, it could raise enough money to save an average of 3.6 million lives a year through spending on basic health systems.

What we achieved

• Our European Youth Ambassadors were out on the streets raising awareness. Behind the scenes, we briefed policymakers and journalists about our campaign to secure media coverage.
• We gained media coverage in more than 50 countries, including in 16 of the G20 countries.
• The G20 agreed to complete a plan to combat tax avoidance by multinational companies, endorsed a global standard for the automatic exchange of tax information, and pledged to begin to exchange information with each other and with other countries. All of these have been implemented.
• The G20 agreed to crack down on secret company ownership by implementing the G20 High-Level Principles on Beneficial Ownership Transparency.

Impact

Over 88,000 people signed our petition, which we delivered to governments as they headed to the G20 meetings.

More than 15,000 people sent tweets and messages directly to G20 finance ministers ahead of the meetings.

What we did

• We launched a campaign to get world leaders to put an end to it, calling for new transparency laws. The G20 Summit in Brisbane, Australia was the perfect opportunity for leaders to agree a way forward and crack-down on this scandal.
• ONE released a video featuring a voiceover by actor Colin Farrell, who explained, with some help from a zombie, that anyone (even a dead person) can engage in the shady business practices that are helping to remove a trillion dollars every year from developing countries.