Report blames tax havens for illegal global trade
(CNS): A new report published Tuesday by Global Financial Integrity points the finger at what it describes as the global shadow financial system comprising tax havens and secrecy jurisdictions for facilitating the illicit trade in “goods, guns, people, and natural resources.” The $650 billion trade most negatively impacts the developing world, “Transnational Crime in the Developing World" finds. Anonymous trust accounts, fake foundations and disguised corporations sustain the illegal trade in drugs, humans, wildlife, counterfeit goods and currencies, human organs, small arms, diamonds and other gems, oil, timber, fish, art and cultural property, and gold the report says.
“While this report includes a monetary measure of the cost of these illicit activities, it also stresses that the activities associated with these illicit markets—human rights abuses, corruption, murder— extract a significant toll on the lives of people in these developing countries and undermines economic growth and good governance efforts,” said report author Jeremy Haken.
Of the 12 illicit activities studied, trade in drugs ($320 billion per year) and counterfeiting ($250 billion per year) were ranked first and second in terms of illicit funds generated. Another key finding of the report was that profits from illicit markets are making their way to transnational crime syndicates through vast international trade networks. The report also emphasizes a link between transnational crime and economic “underdevelopment”.
Raymond Baker writes in the report’s introduction that the cross-border passage of criminal money is facilitated by the “global shadow financial system comprising tax havens, secrecy jurisdictions, disguised corporations, anonymous trust accounts, fake foundations, trade mispricing, and money laundering techniques.
“This is precisely the same structure that enables the movement of the other two components of illicit proceeds—the corrupt and commercially tax evading money. We cannot succeed in curtailing part of these flows while at the same time facilitating other parts of these flows,” he writes. “The developing countries bear most of the burden of this facilitating global structure, producing impoverishment, violence, and shortened lives for millions of people across the world.
Category: World News
But I have to say: Thanks to the Tax Havens for causing the governments to lower their taxes on the people! Tax Havens are a haven indeed, and governments don’t like havens, because they can’t pull strings. Finally their aim is to get rid of all tax-competitors so that they can freely tax… and tax… and tax… their citizens without repercussions. If they have their way, they will be no place to run under their heavy tax regulations.
Tax havens make the rich richer at the expense of the poor.
But if I am a very rich man and the country I live in, imposes taxes on me and my company for everything, and I see a beautiful place like Cayman that would secure my money and will not tax me a cent, why should I be penalized for banking with them??? That is what I don’t understand! You have people who have played the game of Capitalism and made their wealth. There are not crooks, and yet they are being seen like such, because they don’t want to pay government that consist of the biggest of crooks.
Haven’t had a chance to read the whole document but did a quick search for "Cayman" and it doesn’t pop up. I also read the section on "Diamonds and Gemstones" a subject that I know something about and it was a worthless filler page with less content than one can find anywhere on the internet. I wonder if the rest of this document is a useless? 2 years of research! Amazing what people get paid for nowadays.
Since we are no longer a “tax haven” I think we can say shame on those other “tax havens” like the US, especially Colorado and Delaware.