A Washington DC-headquartered advocacy group claims flows out of countries such as China via tax evasion, bribery and other misbehavior continues to be worryingly high and a blight on poorer nations.

A sum equating to $249.5 billion went out of Mainland China in 2012, with much of it driven by tax dodgers, criminals and payers of bribes, double the amount ($122 billion) of such outflows in that same year from Russia, says Global Financial Integrity, a US-based group tracking such behavior.

The data will add to calls for more facts to be made public about who are beneficial owners of entities such as companies – an issue that remains highly controversial because of privacy concerns. (See here.)

In third place for such illicit flows is India, at $94.7 billion, followed by Mexico, at $59.66 billion - then Malaysia, at $48.93 billion, the report said. In sixth spot is Saudi Arabia, at $46.53 billion, then Thailand, at $35.56 billion, then Brazil, at $33.93 billion; South Africa, at $29.13 billion, and, in tenth place, Costa Rica, at $21.55 billion.

A record $991.2 billion in illicit capital flowed out of developing and emerging economies in 2012, GFI, which is headquartered in Washington DC, said in its 2014 annual global update. It says it is the first such organization of its type to have collected and published figures for 2012.

Such figures are bound to add to concerns that despite much of the work and commentary around anti-money laundering campaigns, tax evasion and anti-bribery efforts, many jurisdictions have not yet stemmed the flow of such monies. It should be noted, meanwhile, that a recent report by the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development has pinned much of the blame on global bribery on large multinationals, many of them run out of developed, Western economies.

The GFI report is called Illicit Financial Flows from Developing Countries: 2003-2012. It said illicit outflows are growing at an inflation-adjusted 9.4 per cent rate per year. This level is around double global GDP growth over the same period, it said. GFI says its experts look at discrepancies in balance of payments figures and trends in trade statistics, as reported by the International Monetary Fund, to detect illicit flows. It says this technique is "highly conservative" and doesn't pick up movements of bulk cash, mispricing of services, same-invoice trade invoicing or other forms of money laundering.

“As this report demonstrates, illicit financial flows are the most damaging economic problem plaguing the world’s developing and emerging economies,” GFI President Raymond Baker, said in a statement about the survey. “These outflows - already greater than the combined sum of all FDI and ODA flowing into these countries - are sapping roughly a trillion dollars per year from the world’s poor and middle-income economies,” Baker said.

“It is simply impossible to achieve sustainable global development unless world leaders agree to address this issue head-on. That’s why it is essential for the United Nations to include a specific target next year to halve all trade-related illicit flows by 2030 as part of post-2015 Sustainable Development Agenda,” Baker continued.

As a share of its economy, sub-Saharan Africa suffered the largest illicit financial outflows - averaging 5.5 per cent of its GDP - followed by developing Europe (4.4 per cent), Asia (3.7 per cent), Middle East and North Africa (3.7 per cent), and the Western Hemisphere (3.3 per cent).

The fraudulent mis-invoicing of trade transactions was revealed to be the largest component of illicit financial flows from developing countries, accounting for 77.8 percent of all such flows—highlighting that any effort to significantly curtail such transfers must address trade mis-invoicing.

GFI advocates a number of steps to stamp out such financial flows, including the idea of governments setting up public registries of meaningful beneficial ownership information on all legal entities. It also says financial regulators should require that all banks in their country know the true beneficial owner(s) of any account opened in their financial institution. The group also wants public authorities to fully adopt and implement all the Financial Action Task Force’s (FATF) anti-money laundering recommendations.

Another recommendation of the GFI is that policymakers should require multinational companies to publicly disclose their revenues, profits, losses, sales, taxes paid, subsidiaries, and staff levels on a country-by-country basis.