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Little of what we see on television, however, is quite what it seems. Williams had an incentive—the usual one in our republic, money—for overmastering his bashfulness on that occasion. The pharmaceutical corporation GlaxoSmithKline (GSK), through its public relations firm, Cohn & Wolfe, was paying him a still undisclosed sum, not to tout its antidepressant Paxil but simply to declare, to both Oprah and the press, "I've always been a shy person."

Disclosure Statement v1.0

Ten years ago I stepped out of international business and into the think-tank community with a primary goal of getting reality on the table. I had seen more corruption, more money laundering, more financial crime than any one person should see in a lifetime, and I resolved to say what I wanted to say about this overarching reality. Why wasn’t reality already on the table? What is it about this subject matter that is so mysterious or so frightening that we hesitate to go there? Basically is it that we can’t see it or don’t want to see it?

This is the reality that we seek to get on the table. Illicit outflows from developing and transitional economies vastly exceed overseas development assistance going into developing and transitional economies. In my estimates, which I and others think are conservative, by a factor of ten to one. More analysis, better analysis in the future may make this a narrower picture or make it a wider picture. But no analysis will make this a pretty picture.