Governments proudly take credit for instantly slapping powerful restrictions on Russian billionaires and their assets. But how did the governments know where these assets are? Ironically these governments knew of the assets in spite of those governments’ efforts to vigorously and viciously prosecute employees of banks, accounting and law firms — and even government departments — who exposed how their employers facilitated or ignored tax evasion for the super rich of the world, including for our discussion today, the Russian elite.
The governments, that is the senior bureaucrats in regulatory positions who wanted to be able to get lucrative jobs with the entities that they regulated when retiring from government, and the politicians who depended on ultrahigh net worth political donors, had a problem. The ruling wealth class of every nation, including Russia, were able to confidently avoid paying a fair share of taxes by using a complex structure of corporations and trusts dispersed through a maze of secrecy jurisdictions. This methodology was first developed by the drug lords, and because of its resounding success was quickly adapted by the financially privileged. And both thrived in a comfortable, well-hidden monetary parallel universe for some decades.
As blatant bank complicity in money laundering for drug lords was being exposed, for example, Wachovia and HSBC assisting the Sinaloa drug cartel in getting their hard currency into the safety of the electronic global...
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