Financial Transparency Coalition

Sarah Petre-Mears controls more than 1,200 companies across the Caribbean, Ireland, New Zealand, and the United Kingdom. Supposedly. Actually Petre-Mears doesn’t know much about the companies for which she passes resolutions and helps set up bank accounts; all she needs to do is sign her name. Because Petre-Mears is actually just a nominee-director, who keep the real owners of her companies secret by selling their names for use on official company documents, whilst giving addresses in obscure places all over the world. Walk into Madrid’s famed art museum, Thyssen-Bornemiza, and you’ll find the private art collection of Carmen Thyssen-Bornemisza, which...

ICIJ's investigation last week into the world of secrecy in tax havens is a voluminous, detailed, entirely worthwhile read. There are literally dozens of unique stories that you can sift through, including this weekend's fantastic summary in the Washington Post of the investigation. The damage from offshore secrecy comes far and wide, from billionaires like Bernie Madoff using offshore tax havens to facilitate Ponzi schemes to couples trying to unable to locate assets following a divorce.

Yesterday, the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) released an article explaining how they explore the hidden world of shell companies. After a three year long investigation, ICIJ’s director, Gerard Ryle, obtained information about offshore companies that included over 2.5 million files. These files contained information surrounding shell companies, nominee directors, and shareholders for over 122,000 shell companies. ICIJ found that most offshore companies were staffed by nominee directors, or people who sell their name to be listed as part of the company. ICIJ also found that the people setting up offshore companies were mostly...