This June 2015 report, the latest in a series by Global Financial Integrity (GFI), highlights the outsized impact that illicit financial flows have on the world’s poorest economies. The study looks at illicit financial flows from some of the world’s poorest nations and compares those values to some traditional indicators of development—including GDP, total trade, foreign direct investment, public expenditures on education and health services, and total tax revenue, among others—over the period 2008–2012. The report also produces several scatter plots in which illicit flows values for all developing and emerging market nations are compared to key TRADE INDICATORS and various development indices, such as human development, inequality, and poverty, to determine if correlations exist between the two. Correlation to Higher Poverty By two different measures of poverty, the study reveals a positive correlation between higher levels of poverty and larger illicit outflows. That is, countries with higher levels of illicit financial flows (relative to GDP) tend to struggle with higher levels of poverty
