Thread by @BusinessInsider

Financial secrecy laws in South Dakota have made the state a prime location for foreigners who want to conceal and protect their assets.

The Pandora Papers, leaked to @ICIJorg, reveal that South Dakota holds $360 billion in customer assets.

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Sioux Falls, South Dakota, with a population of less than 200,000, hosts tens of millions of dollars in trusts belonging to people and companies accused of human rights abuses and other wrongdoing, @washingtonpost reports.

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Dozens of current and former world leaders, billionaires, rockstars, and government officials have stashed billions of dollars in secret offshore accounts, according to an investigation by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists.

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Lawmakers in South Dakota have approved legislation drafted by trust industry insiders, protecting their customers' finances and adding additional benefits, according to the ICIJ.

The accounts grew from $57.3 billion to $360 billion in the last decade.

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In 2019, for example, family members of the former vice president of the Dominican Republic, who once led one of the largest sugar producers in the country, finalized several trusts in South Dakota.

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The trusts held personal wealth and shares of the company, which has stood accused of human rights and labor abuses, including illegally bulldozing houses of impoverished families to expand plantations.

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In South Dakota, all assets are protected from any civil claims, @guardian reports.

Because the state has no income tax, no inheritance tax, and no capital gains tax, finances there are also sheltered from the government, the outlet said.

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81 of the offshore accounts detailed in the Pandora Papers are in South Dakota, making it the state in the US with the largest number of trusts from the report, according to the ICIJ.

For more reporting on the Pandora Papers, follow @thisisinsider.

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.@Chuck99to1, director of the Program on Inequality and the Common Good at @IPS_DC, has known about the tax problem for years.

Once an heir to the Oscar Mayer wiener fortune, Collins now studies how the ultrawealthy dodge taxes in America.

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In March, Collins told Insider that Americans largely don't understand that "we are now the tax haven."

The US is the No. 2 destination for "global kleptocratic capital," he said, which ends up in places like Delaware and Wyoming — and South Dakota.

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