Secrecy strategies: Global patterns in elites' quest for confidentiality in offshore finance.

ABSTRACT: Scholars and policy-makers know a lot about the ways offshore financial centers compete with one another to offer secrecy to elites, but still know too little about how and why elites take up these offerings to conceal their assets and identities offshore. This paper fills the gap in knowledge by examining the distinct patterns for achieving offshore secrecy among elites in 65 countries. We take a cross-national comparative perspective, showing that the patterns are contingent in part on political conditions in the elites' home countries. Using data from two publicly available sources- the Offshore Leaks Database and the World Justice Project Rule of Law Index-we advance knowledge for scholars and policy-makers with three main results. First, we find that elites from corrupt countries are

SUBMITTER: Chang HH 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC12266413 | biostudies-literature | 2025

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature