CAPITALISM'S ACHILLES HEEL Dirty Money and How to

36 CAPITALISM’S ACHILLES HEEL
There are some delightful places where you can situate or purchase your
secret companies. In the Caribbean you have Anguilla, Antigua and Barbuda,
Aruba, Bahamas, Belize, Bermuda, the British Virgin Islands, Barbados, Cayman
Islands, Dominica, Grenada, Montserrat, the Netherlands Antilles, Saint
Kitts and Nevis, Saint Lucia, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, and the Turks
and Caicos Islands. Or there are Panama and Costa Rica in Central America
and Uruguay in South America. If you prefer the Pacific the choices include
the Cook Islands, the Marshall Islands, Tonga, the Maldives, the Marianas,
Nauru, Niue, Vanuatu, and Western Samoa. Asian and Middle Eastern secrecy
jurisdictions include Hong Kong, Macau, Singapore, Labuan off the
coast of Malaysia, Bahrain, Dubai, and Lebanon. Africa is getting into the
game with Mauritius, the Seychelles, South Africa, Liberia, São Tomé and
Principe and the little enclave of Melilla, one of two parts of Spanish Morocco.
And, of course, Europe offers some of the most experienced and discreet jurisdictions,
including the Isle of Man, the Channel Islands of Jersey, Guernsey,
Alderney and Sark, the Åland Islands, the islands of Cyprus, Malta, and
Madeira, plus Gibraltar and Monaco at the southern edges of Europe, as well
as Switzerland, Austria, Liechtenstein, Luxembourg, Belgium, Hungary, Ireland,
the lovely enclave of Campione d’Italia surrounded by Switzerland, and
the Principality of Andorra tucked in between France and Spain. Off the coast
of Newfoundland the French territory of Saint Pierre et Miquelon is reportedly
a player in this business. This totals 63 jurisdictions providing varying degrees
of incorporation concealment and protection from probing eyes.
As you select a place to acquire your anonymous international business
corporation and plan your circuitous travels to meet clandestinely with a shady
lawyer prepared to provide you with a dummy corporation to serve your unrevealed
interest in moving ill-gotten gains with the utmost secrecy, you may actually
be disappointed to learn that you don’t need to go there at all. In almost
every one of these jurisdictions, the whole thing can generally be done with a
phone call or fax or online. Using your search engine, enter “international business
companies” or “offshore corporations,” and scores of web sites will pop
into view offering instant service, comparing the pros and cons of various jurisdictions
and quoting fee schedules for creating your own shadowy company.
I have lost count of the number of anonymous entities existing in these
jurisdictions. Several years ago, the British Virgin Islands alone reportedly
had 180,000 and the Caribbean as a whole had 500,000. More were being
formed at a reported rate of nearly 200,000 a year. The total is certainly well