Ghana placed 9th in Africa as the most financially secretive country, according to the Tax Justice Network’s Financial Secrecy Index.

However, globally, it was ranked 70th with an FSI Share of 0.49%.

According to the report, Ghana scored 167 in terms of the Financial Sector Index Value.

The FSI Value is a measure of how much financial secrecy the jurisdiction supplies, resulting from the combination of the jurisdiction’s Secrecy Score and Global Scale Weight.

The country scored 53% with respect to the Secrecy Score. It got 27% for Banking Secrecy, 50% with respect to Trust and Foundations Register, 15% in terms of Recorded Company Ownership, and 50% for Other Wealth ownership.

The nation, however, scored 0% for Limited Partnership Transparency and 100% for Legal Entity Transparency.  

The Global Scale Weight was 0.1%, whiles the FSI Share was 0.49%. This means Ghana supplies 0.491% of the world’s financial secrecy.  

In Africa, Angola (33rd globally) was ranked 1st, followed by Algeria (34th) and Liberia (40th) in 2nd and 3rd respectively.

Kenya (41st), Nigeria (42nd), South Africa (46th) Mauritius (55th) and Egypt (56th) place 4th, 5th, 6th, 7th and 8th respectively.

United States of America placed 1st in the world with an FSI share of 5.74%, whilst Switzerland (3.43%), Singapore (3.43%) and Hong Kong (2.73%) placed 2nd, 3rd and 4th respectively.

The Financial Secrecy Index is a ranking of jurisdictions most complicit in helping individuals to hide their finances from the rule of law.

Financial secrecy facilitates tax abuse, enables money laundering and undermines the human rights of all.

The index identifies the world’s biggest suppliers of financial secrecy and spotlights the laws that governments can change to reduce their contribution to financial secrecy.

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