Offshore finance: more than £12T siphoned out of emerging countries

theguardian.com

23 points·benologist··7 comments

Is it possible that these people and orgs want to keep some of their money as savings — and who cares where they are, since they're just supposed to sit in a vault anyway? Of course, the more enterprising governments cannot have that, and your savings are never truly savings (or yours, for that matter). Having savings in a foreign economy, in a different jurisdiction is the equivalent of an offsite offline backup — it's just good practice.

The commies at Guarniad of course don't rely on savings for their retirement, so they don't see it that way.

Yes, some of those people just want to keep some backup money in a different jurisdiction. Most of those people probably just want to do business offshore, and maybe even getting more money back into their local economy.

Those are both quite ok and nobody should disturb them. But lets face it - most of the money (not people) are plainly stolen and hiding outside local law enforcement's sight.

But that's not what the rhetoric is. It is important to understand how the world economy works, but this uncouth hatred for confidentiality, anonymity, and ownership is very old and very predictable. There are still places people can keep private property — bah humbug!

Having the money offshore, away from possible capital controls does not necessarily mean committing tax fraud by not declaring the income.

I wonder if the ease of movement both physically and financially is going to make it permanently non-viable for countries to keep control over their citizens' assets as was done in the 20th Century.

Number changed to 8tn

Yes now showing as $12tn (£8tn)

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