Pirate Banking: $21 to $32 Trillion in Estimated Tax Haven Money, Managed by Big Global Banks
An interview on Real News Network with James Henry of the Tax
Justice Network covers his newly released report “The Price of Offshore Revisited” in which he estimates the size of the “offshore” market as somewhere between $21 and $32 trillion as of December 2010. Note that this total includes only financial assets, and thus omits real assets (real estate, gold, artwork, yachts) that are held via trusts or corporate entities in tax havens.If you are in finance, the broad outlines of this story are familiar. Much of “private banking”, particularly the Swiss variety, is to serve as a bolthole for money that the wealthy are trying to keep out of the hands of the taxman (or have looted from their country’s treasury). Henry estimates that 90% the total funds in “offshore” accounts is not reported to tax authorities. But US firms have become fierce competitors in this business. In the 1980s, Citibank became a major player in the Latin American market. And the current ranking of private banking operations puts Goldman as number three, behind UBS and Credit Suisse. And the results are perverse.
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