Banks, politicians, drug cartels and arm dealers: they all use the system of parking money to offshore tax heavens. A system that cost tax payers huge amount of money.
The International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) a global network of 160 reporters in more than 60 countries shook the world last week with a series of publications based on leaked information about holders of offshore companies. The series “Offshore Leaks”.
“A cache of 2.5 million files has cracked open the secrets of more than 120,000 offshore companies and trusts, exposing hidden dealings of politicians, con men and the mega-rich the world over.
The secret records obtained by the ICIJ lay bare the names behind covert companies and private trusts in the British Virgin Islands, the Cook Islands and other offshore hideaways.
They include American doctors and dentists and middle-class Greek villagers as well as families and associates of long-time despots, Wall Street swindlers, Eastern European and Indonesian billionaires, Russian corporate executives, international arms dealers and a sham-director-fronted company that the European Union has labeled as a cog in Iran’s nuclear-development program.
The leaked files provide facts and figures — cash transfers, incorporation dates, links between companies and individuals — that illustrate how offshore financial secrecy has spread aggressively around the globe, allowing the wealthy and the well-connected to dodge taxes and fueling corruption and economic woes in rich and poor nations alike.”
But what are offshore tax havens, who uses them, and how do they work? ICIJ has prepared an animated video to explain what seems a mystery for the waste majority of people.
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Written by Kimberley Porteous and Marina Walker Guevara, with Scott Higham. Animations by Sohail Al-Jamea and Patterson Clark.
