Given that offshore tax havens are largely located in small, independent states or self-governing territories, it could be assumed that they have little connection to OECD states and major financial centers such as London and New York. This is not the case. The so-called tax havens are in fact part of a much larger network of financial and corporate services that depends on lawyers, accountants, and bankers located in major Western cities. Only one part of the havens’ business actually involves providing lower tax rates to individual foreign account holders.
These techniques originally developed to assist American executives and Belgian dentists, and later multinational corporations, to limit their exposure— sometimes lawfully, sometimes unlawfully—to their respective tax authorities. Today, they’re increasingly deployed to flows of tainted capital from developing countries, helping those funds transit from their home jurisdictions and ultimately to the West.
