Financial Transparency Coalition

You’ve heard the story before. A corporation with something to hide uses a tax haven as a host for its phony subsidiaries. In the classic tale, it is for the purposes of evading millions in taxes. Sometimes the corporation exploits the tax haven for other evils, like hiding losses from investors. My favorite example is Enron’s executives, who used shell corporations with snazzy names like “Raptor” and “JEDI” to hide losses and fabricate earnings—with disastrous results. But never before have I heard of companies using tax havens to win U.S. government contracts. That sentence sounds shady...