When Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. addressed the Ukrainian Parliament in December, he came close to lecturing his audience: “You cannot name me a single democracy in the world where the cancer of corruption is prevalent.” Yet every time a Western politician makes that kind of speech, one wonders: Where exactly do they think the dirty money goes?

The cash isn’t in Ukraine. It’s not in those tax havens either. If Panama kept what gets routed there, it would be one of the richest places on earth. If even a fraction of the money stolen from Ukrainians stayed on the Isle of Man, the place would not be the dour, grey lump of rock that it is.

Offshore jurisdictions are only pipelines, conduits, entrepôts. Money pours through them, but it does not stay, except for the fraction that pays the lawyers and the accountants who handle the deals — the plumbers who keep the system running.

If you’ve gone to the trouble of stealing millions of dollars, you want to keep them somewhere more secure than Panama. You want the money in Manhattan, Zurich or London. You want it somewhere with excellent hospitals, top-ranking schools, A-list celebrities and world-class events. You want it somewhere you can enjoy yourself.

Ukraine is trying to battle this system. In late 2014 it passed a law requiring Ukrainian companies to declare who really owns or controls them. No more anonymous holding shells registered offshore. “This is a crucial tool for revealing the real links between politics and business,” said Daria Kaleniuk, co-founder of the Anticorruption Action Center.

Other countries are following suit: Britain, Norway and Denmark plan to require companies to disclose ultimate ownership, so-called beneficial ownership. As of June, the people who have significant control of companies in Britain will have to be named on a public register. Prime Minister David Cameron is pushing for Britain’s overseas territories to require the same. The U.S. Treasury Department is considering similar regulations, after a pilot project to identify secret buyers of luxury real estate in Manhattan and Miami.

These laws cannot be put in place fast enough, because the main enabler of corruption in Ukraine isn’t Mossack Fonseca, or even Panama; it’s the West. As long as the world’s kleptocrats are allowed to use anonymous corporate vehicles to buy yachts, penthouses and mansions, lawyers will continue to set up those vehicles in tax havens from Delaware to the Seychelles.