Drug smugglers and third-world dictators laundering ill-gotten wealth through secretive banking systems in tax havens is an anachronistic image from crime novels. Leveraging US' remarkable success in compelling tax havens to block terrorist financing, the G20/OECD have successfully persuaded tax havens to improve tax transparency and participate in an international regime of information exchange.  All tax havens have committed to OECD standards for tax transparency and are executing Tax Information Exchange...

-The Telegraph   The New York Times has reported that Wal-Mart, the US-based retail giant, hushed up an internal investigation sometime after the company was told of a bribery campaign to obtain licences and facilitate rapid expansion in Mexico. Some of the alleged instances of bribery are certain to ring a bell in India where it is not too difficult to bend rules for a price. The New York Times said its “examination...

-The Economic Times At the peak of Anna Hazare fever last year, anybody disagreeing with his message or prescription was branded pro-corruption. Over the last few weeks, anybody expressing disappointment at the Supreme Court upholding the Right to Education (RTE) Act is being branded anti-poor or elitist. This is unfair and unnecessary: dissent is not treason. The supporters of Anna and RTE have similar traits: impatient, intellectually certain and more interested in...

PROFESSOR Shamnad Basheer joined the National University of Juridical Sciences (NUJS), Kolkata, in November 2008 as the first Ministry of Human Resource Development Chaired Professor in Intellectual Property Law. Before this, he was Frank H. Marks Visiting Associate Professor of Intellectual Property Law at the George Washington University law school and a research associate at the Oxford Intellectual Property Research Centre (OIPRC).  He is the founder of several initiatives, including...

The country is clearly shaping its legislation to promote access to medicines by fostering generic production. INDIA'S approach to the revision of its Patents Act in 2005 is a clear example of a country shaping its legislation to promote access to medicines by fostering generic production. Although World Trade Organisation (WTO) rules made it mandatory for India to put in place a patent regime for medicines by 2005, nothing obliges...