The amount of untaxed wealth hidden offshore by the richest 0.1 percent exceeds the entire wealth of the poorest half of humanity (4.1 billion people), reveals new Oxfam analysis published today ahead of the 10th anniversary of the Panama Papers. The findings show that, a decade later, the super-rich continue to exploit offshore systems to evade taxes and conceal assets, highlighting the urgent need for coordinated international action to tax extreme wealth and end the use of tax havens.
Oxfam estimates that $3.55 trillion in untaxed wealth was stashed offshore in tax havens and unreported accounts in 2024. This sum exceeds the GDP of France and is more than twice the combined GDP of the world’s 44 least developed countries.
The richest 0.1 percent holds approximately 80 percent of all untaxed offshore wealth, or around $2.84 trillion. Within this tiny group, the ultra-wealthiest 0.01 percent holds roughly half ($1.77 trillion).
Not while the people running the USA are the same people who hide their immense wealth overseas.
Given the last Panama paper and similar leaks it’s much broader than USA :(
It’s a global class issue.
When Ukraine ousted their previous dictator, the Planet Money podcast had a piece on how the Ukrainian presidential palace had been effectively looted, and traced the absurdly long chain of shell companies that kept the actual owner obscured.
Also, the Vox/Netflix documentary series “Explained” had a genuinely good episode about billionaires. One of the things they brought up was that oligarchs store a lot of money in US real estate, like super-expensive NY condos.
This book is good too. Started in Boston and part of why America even exists as a country.
https://bookshop.org/p/books/the-wealth-hoarders-how-billionaires-pay-millions-to-hide-trillions-chuck-collins/368ffa9fd0d2dc32?ean=9781509543496&next=t
It was nearly a decade ago when I saw this, but there was a documentary, I think it was called The Spider’s Web or something like that.
Basically it was about shell companies and “trusts,” mostly centered in the Virgin Islands, where billionaires were keeping their real wealth obscured in off-shore banks.
It was mostly focused on wealthy Brits who derived their generational wealth from colonialism. It was pretty interesting though.
The guy was doing some investigative journalism, but obviously he wasn’t let into any of the buildings, and once he started to attract notice he started receiving threats and stuff. But he traced money trails backwards and they basically never led to individual people who could be held accountable for the money or how it was used.
Looking back now, I wonder how much of Epstein’s wealth was in those banks…
Are there shadow billionaires? Billionaires who are not officially recognized as such because they do such a good job of hiding their wealth?
Oh yeah, I just mean academically. We would need to be on a much different anti oligarchy footing to actually implement. But in the meantime, I like to noodle out systems and mechanisms.
Let’s say we eventually get to a renewed trust buster energy like we used the last time we broke up the corporate giants long ago.
Is there anything we could realistically do even with full control of the government, or is that money basically propping up the entire interconnected world economy?
We need a global solution. The scale of economic power is larger than the scale of our democratically controlled political power. Nationalism won’t save us.
Well you got to work ontologically. A nation is a system with existing controls. And national control is already dicey at best. Implementing a direct solution at the international level would require a system that to my knowledge doesn’t even exists. We treat the UN like an optional club not a world government.
The scale at which we exert political control has been increasing consistently for, approximately, the last 10k years. The rate has been accelerating too. There’s no reason to believe that the current hodge podge of 300 or so regional factions (nations) is the natural or final solution, and every reason to expect that political/economic power will escalate to the global level, and soon.
We should be focused on ensuring that transition is peaceful and collaborative, that the solution we converge on is fair and sustainable. We should especially be concerned with preventing that transition from being a dominance play by the players currently holding the greatest defacto power (i.e., economic, transnational corporations, and military, the USA).
One major impediment to this is the idea that all we—the ordinary people all over the world—can do is fight amongst each other at a national level about relatively trivial social issues (i.e., by voting for the marginally less bad alternative in our national elections). We can, and should, organise and strive for a democratic, fair, well-designed global political system that keeps economic power in check.
Other major impediments are the lies that a) the only alternative to the current system is totalitarian communism, or other 19th century political models, and b) that we—you and I—need to have a perfect solution in hand already. We can demand, via our respective nations, that the world’s best minds come together and design the best system possible, and that was transition to that system peacefully and rationally.
Ah… So if I’m reading you right, you’re saying:
Yes, no system currently accounts for what we NEED it to do. So the most DIRECT solution would be to create a new movement, a new SYSTEM of people, control, and influence that transcends existing abstractions like nationalities, race, culture, and have this ontologically encompassing system implement that change from its larger frame of reference.
I like that. I hadn’t considered that approach and it’s probably right on the money. I think the first step is recognition of the issue and the need for such a movement. As such… Have you thought about names?
Something you would call such an endeavor, or movement, or coalition. Something that would be instantly recognizable as to what the goal or at least spirit or attitude behind it would be? Probably seems like a silly thing to fixate on this early, but sometimes the right name is a powerful tool.