From September 5th to 8th, the Global School to Combat Illicit Financial Flows, Profit Shifting, Taxe and Wage Evasion event took place, in which the Churches and Mining Network and Justice on Rails participated in Johannesburg, the largest city in Southern Africa.

Antônia Larissa Alves (Coordinator of the De Olho Project at CFEM) was invited to be part of the Brazilian delegation, along with Larissa Santos (Political and Project Coordinator for Justice on the Rails); Majú Nascimento (Project Coordinator and Popular Educator in Justice on the Rails); Tadzio Coelho (Professor and Research Coordinator at the IFF Project) – joining a space of workers, activists and community organizations from across the Global South for moments of learning and coalition building focused on issues of illicit financial flows and corporate tax evasion.

The Global School intends to be an extension of existing processes at the national level, using them as a basis to create a space for international solidarity and mutual learning among members of popular movements concerned with economic, social and environmental justice.

“In addition to being a collective learning process, where we teach and learn. The exchange is a space to share experiences, form new alliances and build new works. The school is a stage of a larger project, which we developed and which involves training, networking and research”, highlighted Larissa Santos, from JnT.

The Global School is a project that aims to combat Illicit Financial Flows, Profit Transfers, Tax and Salary Evasion, focusing on transnational mining companies. “On the occasion, many issues related to the theme that are important for the De Olho na CFEM project were addressed”, said Antônia Larissa Alves, coordinator of the De Olho na Cfem project. “Among them, I highlight the various maneuvers and financial innovations used by multinationals to not pay taxes, tributes and fair royalties to the territories where mining is present, which reduces the collection of States and, consequently, the power of communities to bargain for more resources for creation. and improvements in social policies”, he explained. And he concluded: ” It is the example of the mining company Vale that through illicit financial maneuvers,

The central theme of our exchanges is the issue of Tax Evasion. In South Africa, the AIDC (Information and Alternative Development Center @AIDC_RSA ), works a lot with this issue involving labor issues. “In this global school we are talking about tax evasion, profits that are guaranteed by workers, exploitation of our natural resources. We have to understand IFFS as a political issue. How do IFFs manifest on certain systems? When countries make negotiation agreements, they release controls to external actors, large companies that create mechanisms of domination in the access to natural resources”, highlighted Jaco Oelofsen, from AIDC. 

Comitê Nacional em Defesa dos Territórios Frente a Mineração, with information from Justice on the Rails