The Philippines today counts among several Asian countries with the highest levels of illicit financial flows globally. Traced largely to various types of trade misinvoicing, these flows represent billions of lost and foregone tax revenues critical to developing countries such as the Philippines.
Studies found links between increased levels of foreign borrowings and bigger volumes of capital flight, indicating that these flows were not reactions to destabilizing factors or efforts to seek higher returns
An earlier GFI study focused on the Philippines concluded that over a 52-year span (1960-2011), cumulative illicit flows from trade mispricing, unrecorded money transfers, balance of payments leakages, money laundering, etc., amounted to $410.5 billion.
The latest version of the APMDD paper on Illicit Financial Flows.
