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David Marchant | |
|---|---|
| Born | 1965 (age 58–59) |
| Nationality | British |
| Occupation | Journalist |
| Known for | Investigative reporting |
| Website | www |
David E. Marchant (born 1965) is a British-born US-based journalist. He is the editor and owner of OffshoreAlert, a news service and conference organizer that specializes in exposing financial crimes before they occur.
 | This section only references primary sources.(September 2020) |
Marchant, born in 1965, [1] started his journalistic career as a news reporter for The Gwent Gazette (1985–1987) in Ebbw Vale, Wales. He then worked as a reporter for the Bournemouth Evening Echo (1987–1989) and the Western Daily Press (1989–1990). From 1990 to 1993, he was a business reporter for The Royal Gazette in Bermuda. From 1994 to 1996, he was business editor at the Bermuda Sun . [2]
In 1997, Marchant established OffshoreAlert. Since its founding, he has faced legal action in the United States, the Cayman Islands, Canada, and Panama. Additionally, former Prime Minister Keith Mitchell sued him in Grenada. Marchant has said that all of his stories are approved by a lawyer before publishing.[ citation needed ]
Marchant's stories have covered a Ponzi scheme at First International Bank of Grenada, a fraud case at the Cayman Islands based Axiom Legal Financing Fund, and alleged irregularities at Belvedere Management Group and a Spain-based investment group operating as Privilege Wealth.[ citation needed ]
In 2009, The Wall Street Journal reported that 11 people had been charged with crimes as a result of his work, of whom five have been jailed. Marchant was sued by Marc Harris, who was subsequently sentenced to 17 years in jail for money laundering and tax evasion. [3]
An offshore bank is a bank that is operated and regulated under international banking license, which usually prohibits the bank from establishing any business activities in the jurisdiction of establishment. Due to less regulation and transparency, accounts with offshore banks were often used to hide undeclared income. Since the 1980s, jurisdictions that provide financial services to nonresidents on a big scale can be referred to as offshore financial centres. OFCs often also levy little or no corporation tax and/or personal income and high direct taxes such as duty, making the cost of living high.
William McKeeva Bush, is a Caymanian politician, former Speaker of the Parliament of the Cayman Islands and former Premier of the Cayman Islands. Bush, the former leader of the Cayman Democratic Party, is the elected member for the constituency of West Bay West. He is the territory's longest ever serving political figure with service spanning over 35 years, previously serving his tenth term in the Parliament of the Cayman Islands.
A shell corporation is a company or corporation with no significant assets or operations often formed to obtain financing before beginning business. Shell companies were primarily vehicles for lawfully hiding the identity of their beneficial owners, and this is still the defining feature of shell companies due to the loopholes in the global corporate transparency initiatives. It may hold passive investments or be the registered owner of assets, such as intellectual property, or ships. Shell companies may be registered to the address of a company that provides a service setting up shell companies, and which may act as the agent for receipt of legal correspondence. The company may serve as a vehicle for business transactions without itself having any significant assets or operations.
Appleby is a leading offshore legal services provider.
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ProPublica, legally Pro Publica, Inc., is a nonprofit organization based in New York City dedicated to investigative journalism. ProPublica states that its investigations are conducted by its staff of full-time investigative reporters, and the resulting stories are distributed to news partners for publication or broadcast. In some cases, reporters from both ProPublica and its partners work together on a story. ProPublica has partnered with more than 90 different news organizations and has won several Pulitzer Prizes.
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Caribbean360 is the largest online news aggregator for the Caribbean. Started in 2005, it is based in Bridgetown, Barbados. Specializing in news sources from the nations of the Caribbean Community, it competes with One Caribbean Media and the Caribbean Net News. As of 2009, it drew from 35 print and electronic publishers in 28 countries.
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The Financial Secrecy Index (FSI) is a report published by the advocacy organization Tax Justice Network (TJN) which ranks countries by financial secrecy indicators, weighted by the economic flows of each country.
Igor Olenicoff is an American billionaire and real estate developer. In 2007, he was convicted of tax evasion stemming from his use of off-shore companies and Swiss banks to hide his financial assets.
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Marc Matthew Harris is a Panamanian accountant who was formerly active in the field of offshore financial services. At one time he claimed that his firm, The Harris Organisation, had funds under management of $1 billion and $35 million in capital, but the organization collapsed after being exposed as fraudulent in OffshoreAlert in 1998. In 2004, Harris was convicted in the United States on charges of money laundering and tax evasion.
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The Paradise Papers are a set of over 13.4 million confidential electronic documents relating to offshore investments that were leaked to the German reporters Frederik Obermaier and Bastian Obermayer, from the newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung. The newspaper shared them with the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, and a network of more than 380 journalists. Some of the details were made public on 5 November 2017 and stories are still being released.
Conduit OFC and sink OFC is an empirical quantitative method of classifying corporate tax havens, offshore financial centres (OFCs) and tax havens.
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Dhammika Dharmapala is an economist who is the Paul H. and Theo Leffman Professor of Law at the University of Chicago Law School. He is known for his research into corporate tax avoidance, corporate use of tax havens, and the corporate use of base erosion and profit shifting ("BEPS") techniques.