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“The top 10 percent of Russians own 87 percent of everything, a higher proportion than in any other major country” 
Keys to the beginning of modern offshore finance (in the 1950s/‘60s):
1. American missteps
2. Soviet mistrust
3. British regulators turning a blind eye, and British bankers making cash money
1. American missteps
2. Soviet mistrust
3. British regulators turning a blind eye, and British bankers making cash money
The reason Nevis became an offshore haven par excellence: American lawyers, who specifically modeled Nevis’s legislation on Delaware and Wyoming.
This seems like a pretty good descriptor of Maduro’s Venezuela: “a kleptocratic state constitutes a curiously generalized model of laissez-faire economics even if its economy is nominally socialist.”
There’s no record(?!) of how the first real passports-for-sale scheme, out of St. Kitts in the 1980s, got started:
Since 2011, Venezuela’s been the biggest source of foreign funds in Miami real estate:
Someday we’re going to get a Panama Papers-style leak about the trust industry in states like South Dakota or Nevada, and it’s going to be *massive*:
'Fewer than 100 Russian billionaires now have a combined wealth that is greater than the entire population’s savings, according to figures published by Forbes.' themoscowtimes.com/2019/03/06/98-…
'The wealthiest 3 percent of Russians owned 89 percent of all financial assets in 2018, according to joint research by the Higher School of Economics and the state-run VEB Bank.' themoscowtimes.com/2019/04/12/ric…
'More than a third of Russians cannot afford to buy two pairs of shoes each year, and 12 per cent have to use an outdoor or communal toilet at home, Rosstat said in the report.' ft.com/content/41d79f…
'The skewed distribution of offshore wealth implies high rates of tax evasion at the top: we find that the 0.01 percent richest households evade about 25 percent of their taxes.' gabriel-zucman.eu/files/AJZ2019.…
