Maya Forstater

Did you catch that move? It would be more parsimonious (& democratically accountable) to assume that each additional $ collected by the Government of Egypt would be spent according to its own priorities (as reflected in its whole budget) rather than that of a UNDP programmes.

The revenue loss calculation is all kinds of shaky. According to GFI importers declaring overpriced imports evade corporate income tax but don't pay extra VAT or import tariffs. Importers declaring underpriced imports evade VAT & tariffs but don't get clobbered by higher CIT bill

Maybe the fraudsters are achieving this 'heads I win, tails you lose' outcome through clever means and dodgy accounting all along the chain, but its a lot of assumption to come up with the number.

Uncollected VAT on apparently underpriced imports is the biggest one. But unless the importers are the final consumer, or the products are going into the black market surely the VAT would be collected anyway down the line?

Why are GFI, the funder of this report @FordFoundation , the members of the transparency and accountability community @TAInitiative @FinTrCo all so willing to keep churning out these reports, and so uninterested in scrutinising and seriously considering their findings?