For more than two decades, a top French politician was able to quietly stash away hundreds of thousands of euros into a secret foreign bank account, all thanks to the lack of mechanisms that automatically and systematically help countries detect hidden accounts abroad.

The case of Jerome Cahuzac, who held a secret Swiss account despite being France's top official against tax fraud as budget minister, has exposed the meagre measures in place despite repeated public pledges to clamp down on tax fraud and tax havens.

China recorded a rare trade deficit in March as imports exceeded exports by $880 million, data showed Wednesday, as officials and analysts warned of lingering weakness in crucial overseas markets.

The surprise data come a day after Beijing released inflation figures that come in below forecast, which indicated the pick-up in the world's second biggest economy remained fragile.

Spain's economy is faring a little better after an end-2012 slump and growth could even return by the end of the year, Economy Minister Luis de Guindos said Tuesday as doubts grew over the prospects for debt-laden southern European economies.

The Spanish economy had "clearly" improved from the final three months of 2012, when output plunged by 0.8 percent, De Guindos told an economic forum.

An Iraqi official said on Tuesday Amman and Baghdad have signed a deal to extend an $18-billion pipeline to the Red Sea city of Aqaba to export crude and supply Jordan with oil and gas.

"The two countries have signed an agreement to build a 1,700-kilometer (1,056 miles) pipeline from Basra to Aqaba," Nihad Musa, director of State Company for Oil Projects, told Jordan's official news agency Petra in Amman.

Already investigating credit-card giant Visa, the European Commission launched Tuesday a fresh anti-trust probe into its rival MasterCard over payment of inter-bank fees.

The Commission said it had concerns that some of MasterCard's "inter-bank fees and related practices may be anti-competitive," citing the need to ensure a level playing field in a huge and growing market.

Inflation in China slowed to 2.1 percent in March, the National Bureau of Statistics said Tuesday, down from 3.2 percent in February when prices spiked during the Lunar New Year holiday.

The March rise in the consumer price index (CPI) -- a main gauge of inflation -- was lower than the median forecast of 2.4 percent in a poll of 16 economists by Dow Jones Newswires.

Amid a massive scandal involving France's former budget minister and an undeclared Swiss bank account, Swiss banks are more eager than ever to kick out tax cheats and clear their names, bankers and industry experts say.

Tax evasion has become "a real problem for Swiss banks, because it is damaging their reputation" an analyst with a large Zurich-based bank told Agence France Presse, requesting anonymity.

The Asian Development Bank said Tuesday the region's emerging economies would pick up this year but warned that the recovery remained fragile due to the eurozone crisis and tensions in Asia.

The Manila-based lender said in its latest forecast that the uptick in China's economy and "robust growth" in Southeast Asia would lead expansion, which would be also boosted by strong domestic consumption.

Qatar pledged $500 million in aid to rebuild Sudan's war-ravaged western region of Darfur, the official QNA news agency on Monday quoted a minister as saying.

"Qatar has pledged an amount of $500 million as grants and contributions for rebuilding Darfur," said the gas-rich emirate's minister of state for cabinet affairs, Ahmed bin Abdullah al-Mahmud.

A trove of data obtained by a U.S.-based journalists' group that details thousands of offshore accounts reveals several instances of swindles and other financial crimes, The Washington Post newspaper reported Sunday.

Among the 4,000 U.S. individuals listed in the records, at least 30 were American citizens accused in lawsuits or criminal cases of fraud, money laundering or other serious financial misconduct, the report said.