SAO PAULO: The wealthiest people in 33 Latin American and Caribbean nations stashed more than $2 trillion of assets in offshore tax havens between 1970 and 2010, an independent tax-transparency group has said.
The British-based Tax Justice Network (TJN) said in a report released Sunday that the exact figure, $2.058 trillion, compares with a combined foreign debt of $1.01 trillion for those countries.
The report, written James Henry, former chief economist at McKinsey & Company, the global management consulting firm, estimated that $21-$32 trillion in unrecorded wealth is stashed in such tax havens as Switzerland and the Cayman Islands.
The survey notably looked at the unrecorded capital flows, offshore assets and offshore earnings of wealthy individuals in 33 of the 40 countries that make up the Latin American and Caribbean region, during the 1970-2010 period.
Rich Brazilians were found to have placed $519.5 billion in offshore tax havens, ranking fourth in the world after their counterparts from China ($1.2 trillion), Russia and South Korea (each with $779 billion).
In Latin America, the Brazilians were followed by Mexicans ($417.5 billion), Venezuelans ($405 billion), Argentinians (399.1 billion) while counterparts from 29 other regional countries stashed a combined $316.4 billion.
Those offshore assets compared with 2010 foreign debts of $324.5 billion for Brazil, $186.4 billion for Mexico, $129.6 billion for Argentina, $55.7 billion for Venezuela and a total of $317.3 billion for the 29 other countries.
According to Henry, those assets are "protected by a highly paid, industrious bevy of professional enablers in the private banking, legal, accounting and investment industries taking advantage of the increasingly borderless, frictionless global economy".
The report, titled "Inequality: You don't know the half of it: Or why inequality is worse then we thought", found that the top 10 private banks managed more than $6 trillion in 2010, up from $2.3 trillion five years earlier.
Henry based his findings on data from the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank and the Bank of International Settlements, a body which coordinates financial services regulations.
But tax expert and British government adviser John Whiting said he doubted Henry's figures.
"There clearly are some significant amounts hidden away, but if it really is that size what is being done with it all?" he asked.
TJN, which was launched in 2003 in the British parliament, campaigns against tax evasion and tax havens.
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