Corruption watchdog: G-20 moving slowly against tax havens

BERLIN – An international corruption watchdog group says two years after the Panama Papers revealed how the rich have stashed wealth in shell companies, the world’s Group of 20 industrialized and developing nations have made only slow progress improving the legal tools to ensure transparency.

Transparency International said Thursday that 11 G-20 countries still have “weak” or “average” frameworks to fight financial secrecy.

Transparency says good progress has been shown by France, Germany, Italy and Brazil, but Britain is still the only G-20 nation to have a central register of beneficial ownership information publicly available.

Canada and South Korea are listed as “weak,” while the U.S., Australia and China improved from “weak” to “average.”

The report didn’t rank the European Union, but did include G-20 guest countries Netherlands, Norway, Spain and Switzerland.