European Commission Proposal on Corporate and Financial Malpractice

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Saturday, January 1, 2005
Author: 
Bruce Zagaris
Volume: 
21
Issue: 
1
6
Abstract: 
On September 27, 2004, the Commission of the European Communities issued a Communication to the Council and the European Parliament on Preventing and Combating Corporate and Financial Malpractice, recommending a series of four initiatives to tackle transnational financial scandals, such as Parmalat. The background is that a number of scandals have caused uncertainty in capital markets, including the Enron and Parmalat scandals where companies used complex and opaque structures, including subsidiaries in offshore financial centers (OFC), Special Purpose Vehicles (SPV) and complex financial transactions, often with the complicity of third parties, to reduce the transparency of their activities to investors...[more]