The economic harms of offshore finance are far-reaching, often involve illicit actors, and have burdened the world for decades. Consider Teodoro Obiang, who has ruled Equatorial Guinea (EG) since 1979, placing him among the longest serving national leaders in the world. Obiang has also looted his country’s coffers, including hundreds of millions of dollars from the country’s lucrative oil industry, over the course of his rule. Yet though these large oil reserves give EG the third-highest GDP per capita in all of Africa, his theft has left the government unable to pay for basic services like health care and education....
Additional Perspectives
October 2, 2020
I didn’t discover the world of offshore and kleptocracy myself. It was my sister, Darcy Tuttle, who first explained it to me. Her work got her interested in the details of money [...]
September 1, 2020
The way to defeat crooks is not to join them but to fight them relentlessly, to fight without mercy or quarter. Those words, uttered by U.S. Congressman Wright Patman in 1967 in [...]
September 1, 2020
At this point, it should come as no surprise that the U.S. is arguably the largest offshore and financial secrecy haven in the world. Look at any of the traditional tools associated [...]
Summary
When it comes to providing offshore secrecy, the United States is truly exceptional.
