Low and middle-income countries must mobilise domestic resources to finance sustainable development and address growing social and environmental challenges in the face of shrinking foreign aid. Yet, illicit financial flows (IFFs) erode their tax base. For commodity-dependent countries, trade mispricing is a major problem that prevents them from benefitting fairly from the sale of their natural resources. It was against this backdrop that researchers from Switzerland, Ghana and Laos engaged in a six-year interdisciplinary research to study the IFFs associated with commodity trade mispricing and tax evasion. The Ghanaian filmmaker Fiifi Koomsom retraces this research collaboration in “Missing Dollars”, a documentary that plunges viewers into the heart of global trade issues. Gilles Carbonnier, Professor at the Geneva Graduate Institute and project leader, puts this six-year adventure into context.
Curbing Illicit Financial Flows from Resource-Rich Developing Countries 