What Is CICTAR?

CICTAR was formed by a group of unions and civil society organizations who believe that workers and their communities need more and better information about the tax arrangements of multinational corporations.

While corporations have the resources to invest in research and lobbying, trade unions, civil society, workers and the community often do not.

CICTAR acts as an expert resource for these groups. We conduct research into tax avoidance, corruption and corporate structures to support union and civil society campaigns. We aim to focus our work in countries that are influential globally and to use our body of evidence to advocate for changes to the rules that facilitate the tax dodging and corporate malpractice. Our work also enables unions and other civil society organisations to advocate in their countries for greater transparency and fairer rules for multi-national companies.

What We Do

Find out more about CICTAR’s work over the past year by reading our annual report.

Our Team

CICTAR brings together a network of researchers from across the world, depending on the requirements or a particular project. Our current staff includes:

Jason Ward • Principal Analyst

Jason Ward has been a frequent commentator on corporate transparency and tax issues and has worked closely with the Tax Justice Network – Australia and the global tax justice movement. In 2022, Jason was included in the International Tax Review’s list of the 50 most influential people on tax policy. He is currently a Visiting Fellow at the Faculty of Business at the University of Greenwich, United Kingdom. Jason has analysed the accountability and tax practices of large health care and for-profit aged care (nursing home) operators - and other large government contractors - in multiple countries. Jason has helped mobilise over US$10 trillion of investor capital to support the Global Reporting Initiative’s (GRI) proposed tax transparency reporting standards and facilitating landmark shareholder resolutions at major multinationals to require public country by country reporting following the GRI Tax Standard. Jason has a MPhil in Development Studies at the Institute for Development Studies (IDS) at the University of Sussex in the UK. He has lived in Africa, Asia and the Middle East, campaigned to reform the World Bank and IMF, and has decades of research and campaign experience with global unions.

https://twitter.com/JasonWardCICTAR

Toby Quantrill • Operations Coordinator

Toby Quantrill has a background as a development professional with an MSc in Development Planning and Management and over twenty years of experience in the development sector, working with a number of major NGOs and alongside the labour movement. He has worked on direct programme delivery, advocacy and campaigning as well as a broad range of policy areas including health, climate change, disability, trade and, most recently, tax. Toby has worked as tax policy officer with the global NGO Action Aid and with the UK development organization Christian Aid as the Global Lead on Economic Justice. Toby is on the Board of Tax Justice UK and helped to set up and lead the Steering group for the Independent Commission for Reform of International Corporate Taxation (ICRICT), a high level Commission that brings together prominent economists, academics and activists from across the globe.

Livi Gerbase • Researcher: Latin America and Caribbean

Livi Gerbase is a researcher for Latin America and the Caribbean at CICTAR. She holds a master's degree in international political economy from the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ). She has worked on the Public Policy Intelligence Nucleus of the Government of Mato Grosso do Sul in Brazil and was a political advisor at the Institute of Socioeconomic Studies (Inesc). She has authored a number of publications and coordinated projects in the areas of fiscal and tax justice, tax incentives, evaluation of public policies, strategic planning, energy transition, and monetary policy.

Ed Miller • Researcher

Edward Miller is a researcher based in Aotearoa New Zealand. He has spent more than a decade working in the labour movement, both for FIRST Union in Aotearoa and for the Building and Wood Workers’ International from the Asia-Pacific Regional Office in Kuala Lumpur. He holds a LLM from the University of Auckland and has been active in struggles for labour and human rights, trade justice, public ownership and a just transition.

https://twitter.com/labourcartel

Bronwyn Lee • Researcher

Bronwyn Lee has worked as an organiser and researcher with unions and progressive organisations since 2008. She has contributed to CICTAR's work in areas such as digital services taxes, extractive industries, and corporate transparency. She has a Masters in Political Economy from the University of Sydney and is writing her PhD at Binghamton University, NY, on the politics of bauxite (aluminium ore) nationalisation. 

Vivek Kotecha • Affiliate Researcher

Vivek Kotecha began working with CICTAR on a regular basis in 2021. Vivek is an investigative accountant and public policy consultant with a background in health policy and tax management consulting. He trained as a chartered accountant at Deloitte, and then moved into health policy working in both government and later for a public interest think tank. Vivek focuses on applying his expertise in accountancy and business to public policy and public interest issues, particularly around corporate accountability, money flows, and investor strategies. He conducted an industry-wide analysis of where the money going into the care home sector ends up, has examined the relationships between public health services and private providers, and analysed the tax affairs of multinationals such as Amazon. He has a BSc and MSc in Economics from the University of London.

Mike Lewis has worked with CICTAR since 2022, researching tax avoidance and asset stripping in privatised European healthcare and social care. Mike works primarily as a consulting investigator on financial and war crimes. His twenty years of experience include working as a sanctions investigator for the UN Security Council, and leading the enhanced investigation unit of an EU-mandated programme to document illicit weapons in armed conflicts, working across East Africa, the Sahel and the Middle East. He currently serves as consultant weapons expert for an intergovernmental war crimes mechanism; and helps train officials, banks and investigators on sanctions evasion and war crimes financing. He has training in international tax from the International Bureau for Fiscal Documentation (IBFD) in Amsterdam, in small arms handling from the UK Defence Academy, and in forensic awareness from New Zealand’s crown research institute on environmental science. 

Who Funds Us?

CICTAR is funded through solidarity contributions from trade unions and grants from trusts and foundations. The following groups support the work of CICTAR:

The Alex Ferry Foundation, The Joffe Charitable trust, The Laudes Foundation, The Tax Justice Network (TJN), Public Services International (PSI), The European Federation of Public Service Unions (EPSU), The Council of Global Unions (CGU), The International Union of Food, Agricultural, Hotel, Restaurant, Catering, Tobacco and Allied Workers Associations (IUF), The Australian Nursing and Midwifery Federation (ANMF), The New South Wales Nurses and Midwidery Association (NSWNMF), The Community and Public Sector Union (CPSU), Australian Services union (ASU), UNISON, The Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE), Velferdsstaten (Campaign for the Welfare State, Norway)

If you are inspired by what we do and are interested in supporting our work, please get in touch.