Gallery: Beyond the Panama Papers: See Inside the World's Tax Havens
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A popular tourist destination, the Cayman Islands are also synonymous with the notion of offshore financial activity. High-end leisure options abound here too, like a water-based jetpack ride. “The jetpack is zero gravity, the Caymans are zero taxes. We’re in the right place!” former owner Mike Thalasinos says.
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Panama City recently faced a real-estate bubble that many observers agree was fueled by drug money from Colombia and Venezuela being laundered through property—apartment units that remain largely uninhabited. Panama has fiercely resisted transparency initiatives that have seen some success elsewhere.
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Formerly a sanctuary for pirates, the Cayman Islands today have more registered companies than citizens and are the sixth-largest financial center in the world. Financial services there account for more than half of the country’s GDP. Yet many of the companies don’t even have an office—just an address.
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A $100 bill towel at Delaware’s Rehoboth Beach. The US accounts for one-fifth of the global market for offshore financial services, and Delaware has particularly opaque disclosure laws that make it cheap and easy to incorporate a shell company to hide your identity and financial transactions.
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Don't be distracted by the garish depictions of boats and mansions in this painting of Caymanian billionaire Andreas Ugland. Over 19,000 companies are registered at the drab Ugland House there in the center. President Obama has said, "Either this is the largest building in the world or the biggest tax scam on record."
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One of the most secure places on earth, the vault at Le Freeport Singapore includes biometric-recognition and vibration-detection technology. Located adjacent to the airport, Le Freeport contains untold billions in gold, cash, and other assets—even fine art for auction house Christie's—all stored in secrecy.
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Children swimming in Jersey, one of the Channel Islands off the UK coast. Jersey falls within a British network of secrecy jurisdictions, including places like the Caymans, Bermuda, and the City of London, that all have permissive financial laws. In aggregate, this network is the most important tax haven in the world.
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Jersey provides incentives for high-income individuals to become residents, who thereby benefit from the island’s very low taxes. Jersey is ranked 16th on the 2015 Financial Secrecy Index compiled by the Tax Justice Network; this represents a rare improvement in transparency over the past few years.
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A man floats in the 57th-floor swimming pool of the Marina Bay Sands Hotel, with the skyline of "Central," the Singapore financial district, behind him.
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Neil M. Smith, the British Virgin Islands' Financial Secretary, in his office in Road Town, Tortola. The BVI are one of the world's most important offshore financial service centers and the world's leader in incorporating companies. There are more then 800,000 companies based in the BVIs but only 28,000 inhabitants.
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An employee from Myanmar works in one of the recreational spaces at the Google company offices in Singapore. Google avoided about $2 billion in worldwide income taxes in 2011 by shifting $9.8 billion in revenue into shell companies in Bermuda. Reacting to criticism the following year, the company's executive chairman Eric Schmidt declared: "I am very proud of the structure that we set up. ... It's called capitalism. We are proudly capitalistic. I'm not confused about this."
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Richard J. Geisenberger, Delaware's Chief Deputy Secretary of State, stands in the Wilmington State Building, overseeing one of the more than 300 incorporations that take place daily in Delaware. More than 50% of all U.S. publicly traded companies and 63% of the Fortune 500 are incorporated in Delaware.
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At the Elmore Stoutt High School, teacher Colleen Scatliffe-Edwards teaches the Financial Services course to pupils of class 4B, who range in age between 14 and 16. They are taught about the history, workings, successes and upcoming challenges of the industry that provides 60 percent of the islands' GDP. These secondary school courses have been recently implemented in the hope that more islanders will be able to take up positions in an industry that is mostly staffed by foreigners.
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A technician works on a rack at C5's server in Guernsey. C5's facility provides businesses with a secure and ultra-fast fiber optic connection backed up by a temperature-controlled environment and double backup emergency power and cooling systems. This high-capacity server provides hosting to hundreds of electronic gaming companies based in the neighboring Channel Island of Alderney. Through this data center, Alderney transmits more internet gambling traffic than any other location on the globe. Alderney has no gambling or corporate taxes.
