WHO’S THE THIEF?

In the mid-1980s I went undercover to investigate the role of tax havens in the newly globalizing economy. My research saw me return home to Jersey, in the British Channel Islands, where I took a job with one of the Big Four accounting firms, working in their offshore company administration division.

One of the companies I administered was a Jersey-registered subsidiary of a giant transnational oil company, which was the lead upstream operator of a medium-sized oil field in the Delta region of Nigeria. Every month, the Jersey-based company issued an invoice of between $0.5 and $1.5 million to the Nigerian-based operating company for ‘engineering consulting services’. Once the payments had been received at an offshore bank account in Saint Helier, I arranged for them to be transferred via a Swiss bank account held by a Bermudian trust, which subsequently paid on the money to three shell companies in the British Virgin Islands.

This process went on, month after month, year after year. I have no way