Immediate Release: 17/12/2020

Contact: Clancy Moore, National Director, Publish What You Pay Australia, 0410 508 051

New rule means U.S. falls behind in fight against global corruption.

Despite overwhelmingly support in the U.S. in favor of a strong anticorruption rule for oil, gas and mining companies, officials have voted to cut the law and weaken global efforts to stop corruption.

The original 2010 law compels companies in the extractive industries to disclose project-level payments they make to governments in countries where they do business. This led to a ray of sunshine over the notoriously secretive oil, gas, and mining sectors.

The Publish What You Pay coalition globally has long supported greater transparency of tax and sector specific payments involving the oil, gas and mining sectors. The U.S. rule falls well behind the global reporting standard for project payment disclosure already adopted by 27 EU nations, Canada, UK, Norway and Switzerland and the 51 nations implementing the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (EITI). Many financial payments and flows of money will now be hidden from public view.

ASX listed companies BHP, Rio Tinto, South32 and others already report under these laws in the EU, UK and elsewhere.

Clancy Moore, National Director of the Publish What You Pay Australia issued the following comments:

“Whilst the U.S. is weakening its anticorruption efforts, the Australian Government still chooses to have its head in the sand and not mandate any payment disclosure requirements for the more than 700 ASX listed extractive companies doing business in over 106 countries around the world.”

“Project level reporting provides important information for communities to hold governments accountable for the use of public funds, helps deter corruption and informs debates to drive a just transition.”

“Whilst the Trump administration has once again sided with kleptocrats and shadowy business figures in the extractives sector, when will Prime Minister Morrison side with transparency and stopping corruption in this important economic sector.”