As Thomhave and Collins report, ordinary people don’t derive any material benefit from their states transforming themselves into safe-deposit boxes for oligarchs. This corrupted regulatory state impacts our lives in numerous ways. And the Pandora Papers revealed that there is a small army of stateside lawyers ready to come to the aid of those who need to keep their filthy lucre hidden.Īnd as the IPS’s Kalena Thomhave and Chuck Collins note at length, the deterioration of the laws governing trusts have many ill effects on ordinary people, from the way “investments by anonymous trusts in real estate” help to “push up the cost of housing for locals” to the democracy-debasing effect of permitting foreign oligarchs and like-minded thieves to stash their plunder here in the U.S. There’s a sizable amount of corrupt money flowing through America’s think tanks as well. As TNR contributor Casey Michel has noted, the top grifters in the kleptocracy extended universe aren’t just parking their loot in popular Western capitals, they’re buying up real estate in Cleveland -where Ukrainian kleptocrat Ihor Kolomoisky was, at one point, “the largest commercial real estate holder” in the city. is growing in stature as one of the premier locations for oligarchs of all stripes to safely stash their cash. If there’s one thing that we’ve learned from recent disclosures-such as the Pandora Papers-on the lengths that the rich and powerful will go to stash their wealth, it’s that the most innovative and disruptive tax havens in the world are the ones right next door. The truth, however, is that havens for illicit and ill-gotten boodle aren’t nearly as exotic as the Robert Ludlum novel in your mind. What do you think of when you think of tax havens? For many, the idea evokes Swiss banks or Caribbean islands-far-flung locales where shell companies stack high and shady enablers in fine suits ooze around every street corner.
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