$21 Trillion Hidden By Wealthy In Offshore Accounts
A new report says that at least 21 trillion dollars, is being held around the world, in what are known as offshore accounts, or tax havens.
This is as much money as the entire annual economic outputs of the US and Japan, combined but this belongs to just 10 million people worldwide who have offshore bank accounts.
John Christensen from the Tax Justice Network, an organisation fiercely critical of tax havens and economist, Richard Rahn, a former Cayman Islands banking regulator and now a senior fellow at the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank spoke to Al Jazeera.
Rahn says the statistics in the report are bogus.
Source, credit to Aljazeera- http://www.aljazeera.com/video
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There are two banking systems for the wealthy. Private banks. And “pirate” banks.
“Pirate banks” form a large and fast-growing virtual banking system that has helped the wealthy hide more than $21 trillion offshore, according to a new report from the left-leaning Tax Justice Network USA.
That hidden wealth is costing governments $280 billion a year in lost tax revenue, the report says.
The report says much of that wealth is held by fewer than 10 million of the global super-wealthy and is handled by the world’s 50 largest banks. Today’s “pirate banking” clients include everyone from “30-year-old Chinese real-estate speculators and Silicon Valley software tycoons to Dubai oil sheks, Russian presidents, mineral-rich African dictators and Mexican drug lords,” the report said.
“The ‘pirate banking’ system now launders, shelters, manages and, if necessary, re-domiciles the riches of many of the world’s worst villains, as well as the tangible and intangible assets and liabilities of many of our wealthiest individuals,” said the report. Source CNBC
And you can download the report here as well:
