Raymond W. Baker
| Raymond W. Baker | |
|---|---|
 |
|
| Born |
October 30, 1935 Shreveport, LA |
| Nationality |
 United States
|
| Fields | International Business |
| Institutions | Global Financial Integrity |
| Alma mater |
Harvard Business School (M.B.A.) Georgia Institute of Technology |
Raymond W. Baker (born October 30, 1935) is an American businessman, scholar, author, and "authority on financial crime." He is the founder and president of Global Financial Integrity, a research and advocacy organization in Washington, DC working to curtail illicit financial flows.
He is a 1960 graduate of Harvard Business School, and a 1957 graduate of Georgia Institute of Technology, where he was a member of the ANAK Society.
In 1996, Raymond Baker received a grant from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation for a project entitled, “Flight Capital, Poverty and Free-Market Economics.” The project took him to 23 countries where he interviewed over 335 bankers, politicians, government officials, economists, attorneys, tax collectors, security officers, and social scientists on the relationships between commercial tax evasion, bribery, money laundering, and economic growth.
In 2006, Baker founded Global Financial Integrity, the Washington, DC-based research and advocacy organization of which he remains president, with the goal of quantifying and analyzing illicit financial flows while formulating and promoting policy solutions to curb them. Under Baker's leadership, GFI has published several economic reports estimating that nearly US$1 trillion per year flows illicitly out of developing countries. Driving Baker's passion about the issue is his underlying belief that these illegal outflows of capital are the greatest economic problem facing the world's poor. Baker has been quoted as saying, "This $1 trillion or more a year of illicit money that flows across borders and the structure that facilitates its movement is not only the biggest loophole in the global economic system. It is also the most damaging economic condition hurting the poor in developing and transitional economies."
In January 2009, Baker brought together a coalition of research and advocacy organizations and over 50 governments to form the Task Force on Financial Integrity and Economic Development - an organization which advocates for transparency in the global financial system. He served as the first director of the Task Force from its inception in 2009 through the beginning of 2013.
...
Wikipedia