A lesson was learnt in the year 1998 when then-former first lady of Nigeria, Mariam Abacha, was arrested with 38 suitcases stuffed with 100-dollar bills at Nigerian Airport trying to take it out of the country after the death of her husband, the president, Sani Abacha, who had stolen more than 4.3 billion dollars from the country’s treasury, a saga that led to a broader question to world leaders: “How do we hide the billions of money we steal?”
In this story I will reveal the clandestine industry of hundreds of companies dedicated to helping corrupt leaders conceal their ill-gotten wealth where secrecy is paramount and where those involved will go to any length, even lethal ones, to protect their operations; it is called the “Shadow Economy.”
The shadow economy holds over 11 trillion dollars across the world in different offshore accounts and is comprised of a group of underground people ranging from contractors and managers to agents who operate in the dark with only one purpose: to help bad people hide their money. Popular customers are world leaders and sometimes criminals.
This secretive economy was exposed in October 2021 when the explosive Pandora Papers leaked an event that sent shock waves through the global financial community, where more than 12 million documents leaked, exposing money laundering of the world leaders and the “shell companies” they own.
These world leaders first pick the destination where they will hide their money, and the popular locations are Switzerland, Panama, the Cayman Islands, the Bahamas, and Luxembourg.
Then the technical team picks from here, and the second step involves creating a shell company or a business that exists only on paper but has no actual operations or employees in the above location with strict laws to protect the identity of real owners.
King Abdullah of Jordan, according to the Pandora Papers, shows that from 1995 to 20217, he established at least 36 shell companies through which he built a real estate portfolio worth over 100 million dollars across Europe.
The third step is very vital, finding some who is trustworthy, on shell companies they need names on the paper work like CEOs , Directors and Secretary and you guessed right, the names are not of the world leaders but the people they trust called “Nominees” who act as place holders for the real owners of the company and they open bank accounts on the owners behalf, instilling fear in these nominees is the only safe way to make sure they do not run away with the money, leaders like Russian President Vladimir Putin who allegedly bought the Monaco apartment gifted to his girlfriend Svetlana Krivenogik the money came from his offshore accounts.
The final step is maintaining absolute secrecy; this was evident when former Kenyan president Uhuru Kenyatta, who publicly condemned the practice as a diversion tactic, however, it turned out this was all part of a calculated move, but the Pandora Papers leak exposed his family, who owned a web of 11 secretive offshore firms holding assets totaling more than 30 million dollars.
