The thing with all of these is that the rich people are probably just as surprised as you are to show up in these leaks in most cases.
When you get barely rich, like single digit millions, the banks will start to offer you "family office" services. They basically just take care of everything for you. You send them all your money and all your debts (even your phone bills and stuff), and they promise to make sure there is more at the end of the year than the start. They invest for you, they do accounting and file taxes for you. You give them limited power of attorney so you don't even see the tax forms.
If you ask how it all works, they tell you it's really complicated and you should just focus on doing whatever it is that made you rich and let them worry about managing the money for you. Sometimes they do ethical stuff, sometimes not, depending on which bank and which consultant you hire.
I'm not excusing the people who are here, just explaining how some people who you thought were good people end up in these leaks.
Do you have a source for this claim? I can buy that they don't do the fraud themselves, they delegate it. But they generally delegate it knowing full well the kind of actions that are going to be taken. Rich guys also have lawyers and are not kept in the dark while a bank does shady stuff they didn't mean.
I also doubt these delegations are to mainstream banks. I think "special services" probably need to be engaged and there's no plausible deniability on what you're looking for when you engage them, even if you ignore the names and number of offshore accounts you run.
People who got rich through business or politics undoubtedly know what's being done on their behalf, because they couldn't have achieved their success without financial literacy.
But if you told me a champion boxer, football player or musician didn't know how their finances were organised? That could be believable.
I would like to see a source too (specifically for the "we won't tell you how we do it" part). Even in the BBC reporting, the Blairs were very specific how/why their name showed up in here, so it's not like they're "surprised"
It seems pretty preposterous to me that people could be surprised by finding out they have shady offshore bank accounts and what not. If you have a money person and he's not telling you what he's doing with your money that seems like it would set off red flags.
Regardless of if people really are completely ignorant of their own finances and financial strategy I think they are still responsible for it. If I told a judge that I wasn't paying attention to my toxic chemical collection which I kept on the front lawn next to a neighborhood park I wouldn't expect that defense to protect me from legal liability.
> It seems pretty preposterous to me that people could be surprised by finding out they have shady offshore bank accounts and what not.
I wonder about this. Complexity increases fees, so it's not difficult to imagine that people are willing to offload their finances to advisors, who then use overcomplicated tax avoidance strategies to increase their slice of the pie, as well as lock their customers into their services as much as possible.
It wasn't too long ago that we had a financial crisis caused, in part, by financial products that were too complex to price or analyze for proper risk mitigation.
I like the way you view it. A lot of non-rich people do not feel responsible at all for their wealth management. Some get lucky, and are very happy using their extra money to pay people to keep not thinking about this.
I doubt there are such people, they know at least nominally. The thing is, it is not illegal, so unless you re an active politician it doesnt register as something materially unethical
When you get barely rich, like single digit millions, the banks will start to offer you "family office" services. They basically just take care of everything for you. You send them all your money and all your debts (even your phone bills and stuff), and they promise to make sure there is more at the end of the year than the start. They invest for you, they do accounting and file taxes for you. You give them limited power of attorney so you don't even see the tax forms.
If you ask how it all works, they tell you it's really complicated and you should just focus on doing whatever it is that made you rich and let them worry about managing the money for you. Sometimes they do ethical stuff, sometimes not, depending on which bank and which consultant you hire.
I'm not excusing the people who are here, just explaining how some people who you thought were good people end up in these leaks.