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Article

Open Access

The Real Danger Behind the Offshore Business: Identity Laundering

Author(s)

Marius Burcă

Full-Text PDF Download XML 798 Views

DOI:10.17265/1548-6591/2016.03.006

Affiliation(s)

Valahia University, Târgoviște, Romania

ABSTRACT

Every once in a while the public is presented with new evidence that offshore business is evil. The Panama Papers make the latest example. This research would like to expose that offshore business is incriminated for the wrong reasons. Although it may be more popular to call upon the collective empathy that all equal people should equally pay their due tax, the author would like to back the idea that it is not money laundering (and, implicitly, tax evasion), but the terrorist financing which poses the real threat to modern day mankind. The true vulnerability is that the ultimate beneficial owner of any assets managed in offshore companies is no longer visible, which creates the perfect nest for nurturing terrorism. Offshore is not only tax haven, but could also easily become financing terror haven. The solution resides in enforcing ID laundering controls, based on the anti-money laundering ones, such as “Know Your Customer”, on a global scale. The challenges are related to how we all shape the present day definitions of privacy, freedom, and ultimately, human rights.

KEYWORDS

offshore, shell companies, terrorism financing, money laundering, ID laundering, tax havens

Cite this paper

Journal of US-China Public Administration, March 2016, Vol. 13, No. 3, 189-194

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