Book description
Billionaire Warren Buffet, currently the third wealthiest man in the
world, paid the lowest rate of tax among his office staff, including
his receptionist.
In 2006 the world's three biggest banana companies did nearly £400
million worth of business in Britain but paid just £128,000 in tax
between them.
In January 2009, US law enforcement fined Lloyds TSB 0 million after
it admitted secretly channelling Iranian and Sudanese money into the
US banking system.
Tax havens are the most important single reason why poor
people and poor countries stay poor. They lie at the very heart of the
global economy, with over half the world trade processed through them.
They have been instrumental in nearly every major economic event, in
every big financial scandal, and in every financial crisis since the
1970s, including the latest global economic downturn.
In Treasure Islands, Nicholas Shaxson shows how this
happened, and what this means for you.
Nicholas Shaxson is the author of
Poisoned Wells, the Dirty
Politics of African Oil,
an Associate Fellow of the Royal Institute of International Affairs
(Chatham House) and an experienced journalist.
