Douglas Gillison – “Air cargo passing through New York City in 2002 included nearly 700,000 carats of diamonds shipped from the African nation of Ghana. Though they were worth at least $320 million, customs data showed that the gems were valued on paper at less than $11 million, according to researchers from Penn State and New Mexico State universities. The practice of “trade misinvoicing,” or trade fraud, makes headlines every year as the single largest factor in the flow of dirty money tracked by the Washington-based watchdog organization, Global Financial Integrity. The organization says the illicit outflows represent the loss of as much as $1 trillion a year from the world’s developing countries due to crime and corruption, as money is wiped away from their economic output, moved to tax havens and withheld from state revenues. Citizens in India, China, Russia and Mexico are among the biggest losers. But tiny economies like Ghana’s are suffering too, according to a report the organization released Wednesday. Ghana, a mid-level diamond exporter, on averages loses an amount equal to 24 percent of all its foreign direct investment, according to the report. Of 82 developing countries tracked in the report, 40 percent had so-called “illicit financial flows” between 2008 and 2012 that were greater than all they spent on education — in Paraguay, this stood at 361 percent.”