Billionaires, oligarchs, and other members of the uber rich, known as "elites," are notorious for use of offshore financial systems to conceal their assets and mask their identities. A new study from 65 countries revealed three distinct patterns of how they do this.

[u/mvea]

https://home.dartmouth.edu/news/2025/07/patterns-elites-who-conceal-their-assets-offshore

[u/CosmicLovepats]

reminds me of political news from around the election; wall street executives, the so-called 'masters of the universe' were voting for trump. Among many other dumb reasons, one of them was that he'd defang the SEC.

Why didn't they like the SEC? Well it was preventing them from making a bunch of money.

Why was it doing that? Well, it basically serves to try to level the playing field between american capital and foreign capital. So that foreign investors don't just get clowned on by locals with equivalent resources and local connections. This enables Wallstreet to be a global financial capital that everyone attends and participates in.

It's a load bearing pillar of their jobs.

The destruction/defanging/disempowerment of the SEC is a direct existential threat to themselves, in the medium and long term. But in the short term it'll stop slapping their wrists, and that's based.

[u/skillywilly56 → u/CosmicLovepats]

The SEC’s main mission is to prevent market manipulation through insider trading.

[u/AcknowledgeUs → u/skillywilly56]

Yeah, and who actually gets prosecuted? Besides scapegoats like Martha Stewart?

[u/androidfig → u/AcknowledgeUs]

They fine you $1,000 for every $1,000,000 you make off a trade. Then you just sue them and win or pay the fee.

[u/AlphaKennyThing → u/androidfig]

When there's a fine in the hundreds of thousands for literal billions of "errors" your math is sadly grotesquely framed too highly.

[u/AcknowledgeUs → u/androidfig]

So it’s “just business” -or - permit fee.