Richard Murphy
Project Director, senior advisor to the Tax Justice Network
Richard Murphy is a chartered accountant and graduate economist. He was senior partner of a London firm of accountants for many years. He is also a serial entrepreneur.
Since 2000 Richard has worked mainly on taxation policy. He is director Tax Research LLP and advises the Tax Justice Network the UK Trade Union Congress and many other organisations on tax issues. He has also been a World Bank consultant.
According to the Accountancy Age Financial Power List for 2009 Richard is the 25th most influential person in UK finance.
Richard has been a visiting or external research fellow at the universities of Nottingham, Sussex and Portsmouth.
He writes a daily blog at www.taxresearch.org.uk/blog.
He is co-author of a forthcoming book on secrecy jurisdictions for Cornell University Press.
Richard has supervised the research undertaken for this project, much of which he devised. He has also written much of the resulting report and web site.
John Christensen
Director, Tax Justice Network
John is a development economist and director of the International Secretariat of the Tax Justice Network. He has worked as economic policy adviser to various UK government departments, including the Treasury and the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, and was economic adviser to the government of Jersey (a British tax haven) for 11 years. In addition, he has advised a number of major NGOs, including Oxfam and Christian Aid, and for 7 years was director and part-owner of a highly specialised economic consulting company linked to London University’s School of Oriental and African Studies.
John was one of the founder members of the Tax Justice Network, and in 2005 was awarded a special bursary from the Joseph Rowntree Charitable Trust, which enables him to focus full time on developing the network and directing its research and advocacy programmes.
He is a Fellow of the Royal Society for Arts, Manufactures and Commerce, and an external research fellow at Kent University. He contributes regularly to a variety of radio programmes and has published papers in a number of academic journals.
John has been responsible for relationships with the Ford Foundation and project oversight during the course of this two year undertaking. He has also contributed case studies and innumerable hours editing and checking the content of this web site.
Markus Meinzer
Project researcher
Markus is a political scientist and a graduate of the Free University, Berlin. He studied development economics as a component of his political science degree and was an exchange student at the University of Sussex (UK). In 2007/08 he wrote his diploma thesis on Argentinean unilateral measures to curb offshore tax evasion, the onsite research of which was funded by a scholarship from the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD). Currently he is enrolled as PhD-student at Jacobs University, Bremen and he is special invitee to the Permanent Committee on International Tax Planning Control of the Inter-American Centre of Tax Administrations.
He is co-authoring the German language TJN-blog here: http://steuergerechtigkeit.blogspot.com/
His academic research interests include the international political economy of tax and development. His PhD study deals with institutional differences in international regimes of capital regulation, particularly anti-money laundering, tax governance, and financial stability.Markus has been responsible for the collection of the secrecy jurisdiction data that has underpinned much of the work of this project as well as the collection of data and production of some of the case studies included on this web site.
