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LAW.COM

World’s Top Enabler of Financial Secrecy Is United States

Damian Shepherd, May 17, 2022
“For individuals looking to hide their wealth, there’s no country more helpful than the United States. That’s according to research by the Tax Justice Network, which ranked countries by the extent their financial and legal systems help people and entities conceal ownership of assets.”
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Royal United Services Institute (RUSI)

Securing Democracy from Illicit Finance: Strengthening the First Mile

Tom Keatinge and Maria Sofia Reiser, December 10, 2021
“Kleptocracy undermines democracy. Bolstering the capacity of journalists and civil society to respond to it at its source must be a central priority of the international community.”
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Boston Globe

Summit for Democracy will follow the money

Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, December 6, 2021
“America is engaged in a clash of civilizations, pitting democracy and the free market on one side against kleptocracy and corruption on the other. We have vital national security stakes in this contest: Almost all the international evil that has come America’s way in recent decades has come from regimes outside the rule of law, from terrorist attacks to election subversion.”
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D+C Development and Cooperation

Democracy versus kleptocracy

Hans Dembowski, November 4, 2021
“To set the right example, western powers should do much more to fight illicit financial flows. That way they can improve matters at home and have international impacts at the same time. While autocrats and oligarchs like to disparage liberal democracy, they have a keen interest in western countries’ capital markets.”
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El País

The rotten system of tax havens

El País Editorial, October 5, 2021
“The international investigation known as the Pandora Papers… has uncovered the perverse workings of tax havens. It has also shed light on the tremendous extent of tax avoidance – and occasionally evasion – by government leaders, celebrities and businesses. Suspicious jurisdictions are the tools and the breeding ground that allow them to get rich at everyone else’s expense, by shifting the burden of their absenteeism to faithful taxpayers.”
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Foreign Policy

To Pay for the Pandemic, Dry Out the Tax Havens

David L. Carden, July 16, 2020
“The money needed to pay for the pandemic is actually close at hand, hidden away in offshore financial centers (OFCs), more commonly known as tax havens. OFCs are estimated to hold up to $36 trillion in cash, gold, and securities, not including tangible assets such as real estate, art, and jewels. (For comparison, U.S. federal tax revenues are a little over $3 trillion a year.)”
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Foreign Affairs

The Rise of Strategic Corruption

Philip Zelikow, Eric Edelman, Kristofer Harrison, and Celeste Ward Gventer, June 9, 2020
This article, with its prestigious authors from our foreign policy establishment, underscores the threat posed by authoritarian actors to undermine our freedom and democracy through various measures — that almost all involve the use of offshore financial secrecy, in one form or another.  De-creating offshore is an urgent national security issue.
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Freedom House

How Tax Evasion and Other Financial Schemes Undermine Democracy

July 3, 2019
“In the last five years, a series of massive document leaks and media investigations have shed light on both the scope of organized transnational financial crime and national governments’ poor performance in detecting and dismantling these corrupt systems. The scandals—including the Panama Papers, the Paradise Papers, and the lesser-known Cum Ex Files—detailed activities ranging from unethical tax avoidance to criminal tax evasion, fraud, corruption, and money laundering. Such practices pose a multifaceted threat to democratic governance.”
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U.S. PIRG

Shell companies are hijacking our democracy

May 27, 2016
“One of the most incredible disclosures in the Panama papers leaks is the sheer quantity and variety of companies formed with the explicit purposes of undermining the law… for many of the companies created by Mossack Fonseca, they owe their existence to the need for privacy, whether to exploit tax loopholes, or hide illegal activity.”
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Global Issues

Tax Avoidance and Tax Havens; Undermining Democracy

Anup Shah, January 7, 2013
“We might not like the idea of paying taxes, but without it, democracies will struggle to function, and will be unable to provide public services. This affects both rich and poor nations, alike.”
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