About the Task Force

Staff

Leadership
Director Raymond Baker
Managing Director Tom Cardamone
Communications Team
Communications Director Dietlind Lerner
Associate Communications Director Nick Mathiason
New Media Coordinator E.J. Fagan
Outreach Team
Outreach Coordinator Sarah Bracht
Regional Advocate, Africa Sarah Nduku Muyonga
Regional Advocate, Asia Pooja Rangaprasad
Regional Advocate, Latin America Rodolfo Bejarano
Legal Team
Legal Counsel & Director of Government Affairs Heather Lowe

 

 

Raymond Baker is the Director of the Task Force on Financial Integrity and Economic Development and the author of Capitalism’s Achilles Heel: Dirty Money and How to Renew the Free-Market System, published by John Wiley & Sons and cited by the Financial Times as one of the “best business books of 2005.” He has for many years been an internationally respected authority on corruption, money laundering, growth, and foreign policy issues, particularly as they concern developing and transitional economies and impact upon western economic and foreign interests. He has written and spoken extensively, testified often before legislative committees in the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom, been quoted worldwide, and has commented frequently on television and radio in the United States, Europe, and Asia on legislative matters and policy questions, including appearances on Nightline, CNN, BBC, NPR, Four Corners, and GloboNews, among others.

Mr. Baker is a Senior Fellow at the Center for International Policy in Washington, D.C., researching and writing on the linkages between corruption, money laundering, and poverty. He is also a member of the High Level Panel on Illicit Financial Flows from Africa, chaired by former President of South Africa, Thabo Mbeki.

In 1996 he received a grant from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation for a project entitled, “Flight Capital, Poverty and Free-Market Economics.” He traveled to 23 countries to interview 335 central bankers, commercial bankers, government officials, economists, lawyers, tax collectors, security officers, and sociologists on the relationships between bribery, commercial tax evasion, money laundering, and economic growth. From 1985 to 1996 Mr. Baker provided confidential economic advisory services at the presidential level for developing country governments. Activities focused principally on issues surrounding anti-corruption strategies, international terms of trade, and developing country debt. Research was conducted with 550 business owners and managers in eleven countries, concerning import and export mispricing and movement of tax-evading capital.

From 1976 to 1985 Mr. Baker conducted extensive trading activities throughout Latin America and in ten Asian countries including the People’s Republic of China. An affiliated company in London handled transactions in Europe. From 1961 to 1976 he lived in Nigeria and established and managed an investment company which set up and acquired manufacturing and financing ventures, the subject of two Harvard Business School case studies. Educated at Harvard Business School and Georgia Institute of Technology, Mr. Baker is the author of “The Biggest Loophole in the Free-Market System,” “Illegal Flight Capital; Dangers for Global Stability,” “How Dirty Money Binds the Poor,” and other works published in the United States and Europe.

 

Sarah Bracht is the Outreach Coordinator for the Task Force on Financial Integrity and Economic Development.  Until July 2011, Sarah served as the Office Manager at Global Financial Integrity. Prior to joining GFI, Sarah worked as a legal assistant at BuckleySandler LLP, a financial services law firm located in Washington, D.C.

Sarah graduated from the University of Dayton in 2006 with a B.A. in International Studies and French Language. As an undergraduate student, she conceived and coordinated a month-long international exposition to promote the exchange of cultural experiences and to advance study abroad opportunities. The program has since been turned into an annual event hosted by the University’s Center for International Programs.

 

 

Tom Cardamone is the Managing Director of the Task Force on Financial Integrity and Economic Development. For two decades he has worked for and led non-profit public policy organizations in Washington, DC. Among his roles Cardamone has been an analyst, Project Director and Executive Director for, and a consultant to, several non-profit organizations.

Prior to joining the Task Force, Cardamone was a consultant to non-governmental organizations in the areas of strategic organizational and program planning, development and web site content. From 2000 to 2003 he was Executive Director of the Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation, a Washington, D.C.-based arms control group. As a Project Director for the Center from 1993 – 2000, Cardamone developed and implemented the core components of an educational project on the economic, security and human rights implications of excessive military equipment sales to developing nations.

During his career Cardamone has advocated policy positions on television, talk-radio and in print media including appearances on CNN, Canadian Broadcasting and Swiss Broadcasting and in numerous newspapers including The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and The Washington Post. He has delivered remarks on security issues at the James E. Baker, III, Institute for Public Policy at Rice University and at the John F. Kennedy Library. He also was a contributing author for the book “War or Health: A Reader.”

 

E.J. Fagan is New Media Coordinator at the Task Force on Financial Integrity & Economic Development. He comes to the Task Force after completing his Masters of Public Policy at George Mason University, with a concentration in International Institutions. E.J. has worked in new media roles in a number of capacities on campaigns, for a political action committee, and for six years as a baseball blogger. He has written for several baseball magazines including the Yankees Annual series. He graduated from Providence College with a degree in political science in 2009. He holds the same position at Global Financial Integrity.

 

 

 

 

Dietlind Lerner is Communications Director at the Task Force on Financial Integrity and Economic Development. Dietlind comes to this role after four years at Greenpeace International in Amsterdam where she ran communications for the forest campaign before becoming Organizational Communications Manager. Prior to her media relations work, Dietlind spent 15 years on the other side of the fence as an award-winning print reporter, television producer and documentary filmmaker. Based first in Berlin and then Paris, she worked for many of the world’s top media outlets covering stories on three continents. It was a reporting trip to Equatorial Guinea that first opened her eyes to the systemic nature of illegal financial flows and some of the dreadful consequences. A native of Evanston, Illinois, Dietlind is a graduate of Barnard College of Columbia University.

 

 

Heather Lowe serves as Legal Counsel and Director of Government Affairs at Global Financial Integrity, spearheading the organization’s advocacy efforts in the U.S. and internationally. Ms. Lowe is active in the anti-corruption, anti-money laundering policy, and tax reform communities, coordinating with civil society, government officials and intergovernmental organizations in a variety of countries to promote policies to curtail illicit financial flows. Heather is one of two civil society representatives participating in industry consultations on the international anti-money laundering guidelines known as the FATF Recommendations, as well as a member of the OECD’s Anti-Bribery Working Group. Ms. Lowe has presented at numerous international conferences and webinars on money laundering, corruption and offshore tax evasion and avoidance. She is frequently quoted in mainstream press such as the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, Reuters, and Bloomberg, and has appeared as a guest on CNN, Fox Business News, the BBC and RT TV as well as various radio programs.

Ms. Lowe brings international legislative experience and banking and finance law experience to her role, having worked as an aide to a British Member of the European Parliament in Brussels and as a banking and finance attorney at both Clifford Chance LLP in London and Bingham McCutchen LLP in Boston. She is admitted to the Bar in the State of New York and the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. Ms Lowe is a graduate of Boston College Law School (J.D.) and The University of Chicago (A.B.). As part of her degree programs she also studied European, international and English law at the London School of Economics and Political Science (LL.B. program) and at King’s College London (LL.M. program).