Reich writes: "The United States doesn't require companies registered here to disclose their real owners. We thereby provide global corporations and billionaires one of the world's easiest means of hiding their money."
Former Clinton labor secretary Robert Reich. (photo: Steve Russell/Toronto Star)
Big Money and the Corruption of Democracy
14 May 16
he U.S. blames places around the world like the Cayman Islands and the Isle of Man for giving corporations and billionaires secret havens to hide their loot. But the United States doesn’t require companies registered here to disclose their real owners. We thereby provide global corporations and billionaires one of the world’s easiest means of hiding their money. Yesterday the chief minister of the Isle of Man charged that nearly 10 times more shell companies were registered in one building in Delaware than in his entire territory. Researchers in the U.S. and Australia have concluded it’s “easier to obtain an untraceable shell company ... in the U.S. than in any other country save Kenya.”
Last week the Obama Administration submitted legislation to Congress requiring companies registered in the U.S. to disclose their real owners, at least confidentially to the U.S. Treasury. But not even this mild proposal has any chance of passage. Almost all Republicans are opposed, as are many Democrats. There’s no justification for their opposition to this common-sense measure.
Yet another example of the corruption of our democracy by big money.
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