These five countries are conduits for the world’s biggest tax havens

The Dutch monkey in the middle

First came the Panama Papers, then the BahamasLeaks. Journalists continue to shed light on and raise a public outcry over the offshore financial centres that corporations use to reduce their tax bill – something that is still being challenged in court.

A new study has now uncovered all the world’s corporate tax havens and, for the first time, revealed the intermediary countries that companies use to funnel their money into these places.

Published on July 24 in the academic journal Scientific Reports, the paper Uncovering Offshore Financial Centers: Conduits and Sinks in the Global Corporate Ownership Network shows that offshore finance is not the exclusive business of exotic, far-flung places such as the Cayman Islands and Bermuda.

The Netherlands and the United Kingdom also play a crucial – although a heretofore obscure – role in the tax-avoidance game, acting as conduits for corporate profits as they make their way to tax havens.  (more...)

These five countries are conduits for the world’s biggest tax havens