Treasure Islands - Nicholas Shaxson [141]
NOTES
PROLOGUE
1.US Energy Information Administration (EIA), “U.S. Imports by Country of Origin,” http://tonto.eia.doe.gov/dnav/pet/pet_move_impcus_a2_nus_ep00_im0_mbbl_m.htm.
2.The episode is covered in detail in the author’s book Poisoned Wells: The Dirty Politics of African Oil (New York: Palgrave, 2007), chapters 4 and 5.
3.Valerie Lecasble and Airy Routier, Forages en eau profonde (Paris: Grasset, 1998).
4.Ibid., p. 252.
5.Eva Joly, Est-ce dans de monde-là que nous voulons vivre? (Paris: Les Arènes, 2003).
6.“Scandale!: How Roland Dumas Got France Gossiping,” The Independent, January 30, 2001.
7.See Jean-Marie Bockel, “Je veux signer l’acte de décès de la Françafrique,” Le Monde, January 16, 2008. Omar Bongo is now dead; the palace is now inhabited by his son, President Ali Bongo.
8.“Rupert Laid Bare,” The Economist, March 18, 1999.
9.John Lanchester, “Bravo l’artiste,” review of Rupert Murdoch: The Untold Story of the World’s Greatest Media Wizard, by Neil Chenoweth, London Review of Books, February 5, 2004.
10.Eva Joly, Notre affaire à tous (Paris: Les Arènes, 2000).
11.Eva Joly, in Norway’s official aid newsletter, Development Today, March 7, 2007.
12.See Martin Woods, “Banks Financing Mexico Gangs Admitted in Wells Fargo Deal,” Bloomberg, June 29, 2010.
CHAPTER 1 WELCOME TO NOWHERE
1.These figures should be taken as very rough estimates, not least because there is no agreement as to what a tax haven is, and estimates can vary widely. Once we understand that the United States and United Kingdom are major tax havens, the eye-catch figure is quite reasonable, if vague. This particular statistic is from French finance minister Dominique Strauss-Kahn in a speech to the Paris Group of Experts in March 1999; quoted in J. Christensen and M. Hampton, “All Good Things Come to an End,” The World Today (Royal Institute of International Affairs) 55, nos. 8–9 (1999). The share has grown substantially since then, because offshore financial services have been growing at substantially faster rates than the growth in trade.
2.See Ronen Palan, Richard Murphy, and Christian Chavagneux, Tax Havens: How Globalization Really Works (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2010), p. 51. This work uses BIS data to show offshore’s share of banking assets and liabilities rising to around 65 percent in 1990, before falling to 51 percent in 2007. Other measures of offshore, in various tables in the book, show explosive recent growth (interrupted by the financial crisis). Also see Luca Errico and Alberto Musalem, “Offshore Banking: An Analysis of Micro- and Macro-Prudential Issues,” IMF, January 1999, pp. 17–19. This study cites a figure of 54 percent in 1999, which is based on a relatively restrictive definition of offshore; subsequent measurements are affected, according to the IMF, because “the distinction between onshore and offshore banking has become progressively blurred.”
3.Data from Palan et al., Tax Havens; from “IMF Finds ‘Trillions’ in Undeclared Wealth,” Wealth Bulletin, March 15, 2010; and from M. K. Lewis, “International Banking and Offshore Finance: London and the Major Centres,” in Mark P. Hampton and Jason P. Abbott, eds., Offshore Finance Centres and Tax Havens: The Rise of Global Capital (London: Macmillan Business, 1999).
4.The U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) reported in 2008 that 83 of the nation’s hundred biggest corporations had subsidiaries in tax havens; the following year the Tax Justice Network, an advocacy organization that criticizes tax havens, used a broader definition of a tax haven and found that 99 of Europe’s 100 largest companies used offshore subsidiaries.