by Paul Sagar

The Tax Justice Network this week launched the world’s biggest website for the study of “secrecy jurisdictions” – those shady little corners, more commonly known as “tax havens”, where the rich and well connected hide their ill-gotten gains, or clean dirty money on its way to legitimate western bank accounts.

Secrecyjurisdictions.com is a massive, on-going research project.

It collects key data on the world’s 60 secrecy jurisdictions and aims to “map the faultlines” of the global financial infrastructure (including the “pinstripe army” of lawyers, bankers and accountants).

These are the people that enable tax evasion, terrorist financing, organised crime, the looting of developing world assets and a whole host of other evils to take place.

As the website overview states:

Secrecy jurisdictions facilitate illicit financial flows stemming from three overlapping sources: bribery, criminal activity and cross-border trade mispricing. Secrecy jurisdictions and those operating through them undermine development for the poorest countries, and create a criminogenic environment in which all sorts of crimes can thrive and feast on the fruits of law-breaking. Secrecy jurisdictions facilitate a wide range of crimes such as tax evasion, non-payment of alimonies, money laundering, terrorist financing, drug trafficking, human trafficking, illegal arms trading, counterfeiting, insider-dealing, embezzlement, fleeing of bankruptcy orders, all sorts of fraud, and many more.

…

Financial opacity undermines the rule of law and destroys trust in markets. Loss of trust seriously damages market efficiency, raising the cost of capital and wrecking confidence in democracy.

Its purpose is to serve as a resource for those seeking to bring about positive change in the international financial system.

That change is desperately needed.

Global Financial Integrity has estimated that each year, developing and transnational economies experience $800 billion – $1.06 trillion of outflows due to illicit financial flows.

Each year, the developed world gives these economies just $100 billion in aid. By facilitating illicit financial flows, secrecy jurisdictions are at the heart of global poverty, as well as a wider web of corruption, crime and financial abuse.

This is an early step in global attempts to clean up the international financial system, to create a better world.

More information can be found at the Tax Justice Blog, and at Tax Research UK.

www.secrecyjurisdictions.com