First meeting summary published

The first video conference of the full Panel was held on Tuesday, 31 March 2020. The meeting, held virtually due to COVID-19 related restrictions around the world, allowed the Panel members to meet each other, and to take initial steps in organizing their work. The agenda of the meeting included: a review of a background paper drafted by the FACTI Secretariat, organization of work of the panel, and next steps to plan for future work.

The full summary of the meeting is now available.

In the meeting, the following three clusters for the Panel's work were proposed:

• Improve cooperation in tax matters: fostering universal participation in international legal instruments on tax matters; further work on tax avoidance and evasion; preparing consistent and reliable global data on taxation;
• Accountability, public reporting and anti-corruption measures: promoting accountability in contexts where it is currently lacking such as beneficial ownership; anti-corruption measures; improving tracking of asset ownership and use of this information including through the establishment of a global asset registry;
• Cooperation and settling disputes: improving cooperation and standardization on bribery investigation and prosecution; examining options to strengthen peer review processes; exploring options to improve capacity; improving international cooperation on asset recovery and return;

Panel members recognized that global governance and issues related to the political economy of reforms are critical; and. Therefore, that they should be mainstreamed in all three clusters.

The Panel agreed on the allocation of clusters among panel members; it was decided that clusters are not mutually exclusive as panel members may opt to work on more than one cluster.

The Panel will engage with stakeholders (Member States, civil society, experts; civil society and experts) during April and May through virtual meetings.