Treasure Islands - Nicholas Shaxson [144]
29.A conference in the City of London in 1995 was told that the industry objective was to shift offshore the majority of financial assets owned by the world’s high-net-worth individuals by the end of the decade. See Steven Hiatt, ed., A Game as Old as Empire: The Secret World of Economic Hit Men and the Web of Global Corruption (San Francisco: Berrett Koehler, 2007), p. 55.
30.See Senator Levin, news release, “Senate, House Members Introduce Stop Tax Haven Abuse Act: Bill Targets $100 Billion in Lost Tax Each Year from Offshore Tax Dodges,” March 2, 2009. This $100 billion has several components and is in the middle of a range of estimates: The U.S. Treasury in 2007 cited estimates ranging between $40 and $123 billion annually. See Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration, Office of Inspections and Evaluations, “A Combination of Legislative Actions and Increased IRS Capability and Capacity Are Required to Reduce the Multi-Billion Dollar U.S. International Tax Gap,” January 27, 2009.
Levin also states that “abusive domestic tax shelters cost tens of billions of dollars more.” The United States has unusually sophisticated systems in place to stem offshore leakage; developing countries suffer far more in relation to the size of their economies. Education budget details from Office of Management and Budget, www.whitehouse.gov.
31.From the 2008 GAO report. A number of companies, including Delphi, Dow Chemical, MetLife, Pfizer, and Washington Mutual, referred to the “Virgin Islands” but did not differentiate between the British Virgin Islands and the U.S. Virgin Islands.
32.The Deepwater Horizon switched from Panama to the Marshall Islands in 2004. Transocean, the owner of the Deepwater Horizon, has 35 vessels registered in the Marshall Islands. Transocean moved from the Cayman Islands to the Swiss canton of Zug in 2008. For Zeder and the Marshall Islands, see U.S. Office of Insular Affairs, “Fred Monroe Zeder: In Memoriam,” http://www.doi.gov/oia/press/2004/fred_zeder.htm. While Bush’s ambassador to the region, Zeder’s private company, Island Development, became incorporated on October 14, 1986, four days before Zeder signed a treaty providing for $6 million in aid for the Marshall Islands, of which $1.2m was used to help set up the ship registry. Zeder died in 2008. See “Bush Friend, Former Ambassador: Company Wasn’t Disclosed,” Associated Press, reproduced in The Victoria Advocate, April 30, 1990. The United States is responsible for foreign affairs and defense, just as the UK is responsible for the foreign affairs and defense of its Overseas Territories. Khadija Sharife in the London Review of Books blog (“Offshore Exploitation,” June 9, 2010) established that “During a joint hearing to investigate the explosion and sinking of the Deepwater Horizon, Hung Nguyen, a captain in the Coast Guard, was surprised to learn from the US Interior Department’s Mineral Management Service—the unit responsible for overseeing offshore exploitation—that ‘there is no enforcement.’ Each operator ‘self-certifies and establishes what they think is adequate,’ . . . This system of self-regulation was formulated by Dick Cheney’s Energy Task Force.”
33.Khadija Sharife, “Offshore Exploitation,” London Review of Books blog, June 9, 2010.
34.About the Liberian Registry, see Liberian International Ship & Corporate Registry (LISCR, LLC), www.liscr.com, accessed September 30, 2010. For the Standard Oil link, see Andrew Leonard, “Big Oil’s Slick Trick,” Business Spectator, May 15, 2010.
35.Jeffrey Robinson, The Sink: How Banks, Lawyers and Accountants Finance Terrorism and Crime—and Why Governments Can’t Stop Them (London: Constable & Robinson Ltd., 2003), p. 63.
36.Widely cited. See, for example, Simon Raftopolous, “Tax Havens: The Red Herring of the Global Financial Crisis,” Appleby Global press release, May 2009, www.appleby-global.com.
37.The Economist, however, has called tax havens “good for the financial system” and routinely carries advertisements for offshore corporations on its back pages.
38.See “World Governments