Multinational Corporations and Tax Havens as Beneficiaries of a Shadow Financial System

In this chapter, Moyo discusses the intricate relationship between multinational corporations, tax havens, and the global elites as agents and beneficiaries of a rigged global financial system. He argues that the interactions between and among these agents have been responsible for bleeding Africa through a combination of financial engineering techniques including aggressive taxation, illegal tax evasion, mispricing, and imperial profit shifting among the other illicit financial flows from the continent. Moyo notes that, in fact, the massive capital outflows from Africa are not a recent phenomenon. It was most glaring at the time of independence in the 1960s when the departing colonialists squirreled away large sums of money and assets which they stashed in tax havens away from the reach of the newly independent states. He concludes that shadow networks of experts, savvy lawyers, bankers, and accountants that were established during the early years of independence to enable the movement of funds to the secrecy jurisdictions are still active in Africa today.