Treasure Islands: Tax Havens and the Men Who Stole the World.

AuthorRichardson, Matthew

Nicholas Shaxson

BODLEY HEAD, 2011

Treasure Islands is the story of how corporate giants and the super-rich, with their legions of bankers, lawyers and lobbyists, found a space to grow between the cracks of a globalising world, before quietly invading the 'onshore' mainland. That is, the space still inhabited by the rest of us, with its varied laws and regulations, tax and benefit systems, public services, and (seemingly impotent) politics.

It is an eye-opening and highly readable book that shifts seamlessly between investigative journalism, grand history and sober, but nonetheless impassioned, polemic against the corruption of institutions and language that made it all possible. It is also an important book, which sheds light on a system that thrives in the shadows. In the process it provides a compelling new perspective for understanding many of the key themes of post-war history, from the decolonisation of the European empires, to the travails of 'development' policy in the global south, to the rise of neo-liberalism since the 1970s and the endemic instability that has characterised the global economy ever since. Of equal interest (though less explicitly addressed within the book itself), it raises important questions about the ability of democratically elected national politicians to act in an increasingly interconnected world.

The term 'offshore tax haven' evokes the idea of a geographically peripheral and economically insignificant (in systemic terms) space where companies and rich individuals can reap the marginal gains of avoiding tax in their primary place of operations or residence. Shaxson's definition challenges these assumptions. He defines the tax haven as 'a place that seeks to attract business by offering politically stable facilities to help people or entities get around the rules, laws and regulations of jurisdictions elsewhere' (p. 8). This pulls away the double veneer of political neutrality and economic marginality that the beneficiaries of the offshore system prefer us to see. Offshore is not simply an escape from tax, but also from regulation, transparency, the law (including criminal law), and democratic politics, which is clearly far harder to justify. The proactive efforts of these 'places' to attract business, and their means of doing so also indicate that they are not simply peripheral eccentricities of the global economic system. Instead they are drivers of a process that has moved a particular set of norms and...

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