This is a book that none of us can afford to ignore – an agenda-setting, campaigning investigation that shows how global finance works for the few and not the many.

** A Financial Times Book of the Year **

‘Essential reading’ YANIS VAROUFAKIS

We need finance – but when finance grows too big it becomes a curse.

The City of London is the single biggest drain on our resources, sucking talent out of every sphere, siphoning wealth and hoovering up government time. Yet to be ‘competitive’, we’re told we must turn a blind eye to money laundering and appease big business with tax cuts.

Tracing the curse back through economic history, Nicholas Shaxson uncovers how we got to this point. Moving from offshore tax havens to the bizarre industry of wealth management, he tells the explosive story of how finance established a stranglehold on society – and reveals how we can begin to break free.

A thrilling ride inside the world of tax havens and corporate masterminds While the United States experiences recession and economic stagnation and European countries face bankruptcy, experts struggle to make sense of the crisis. Nicholas Shaxson, a former correspondent for the Financial Times and The Economist, argues that tax havens are a central cause of all these disasters. In this hard hitting investigation he uncovers how offshore tax evasion, which has cost the U.S. 100 billion dollars in lost revenue each year, is just one item on a long rap sheet outlining the damage that offshoring wreaks on our societies. In a riveting journey from Moscow to London to Switzerland to Delaware, Shaxson dives deep into a vast and secret playground where bankers and multinational corporations operate side by side with nefarious tax evaders, organized criminals and the world's wealthiest citizens. Tax havens are where all these players get to maximize their own rewards and leave the middle class to pick up the bill. With eye opening revelations, Treasure Islands exposes the culprits and its victims, and shows how: *Over half of world trade is routed through tax havens *The rampant practices that precipitated the latest financial crisis can be traced back to Wall Street's offshoring practices *For every dollar of aid we send to developing countries, ten dollars leave again by the backdoor The offshore system sits much closer to home than the pristine tropical islands of the popular imagination. In fact, it all starts on a tiny island called Manhattan. In this fast paced narrative, Treasure Islands at last explains how the system works and how it's contributing to our ever deepening economic divide.

This is the ugliest chapter in global economic affairs since slavery -- and secretive offshore tax havens are at the heart of the trouble.
Dirty money, tax havens and the offshore system describe the ugliest and most secretive chapter in the history of global economic affairs. The World Bank has reported that the flow of dirty money across borders, out of developing countries and into rich ones, is up to ten times the amount of foreign aid that flows the other way.
Most people regard tax havens as being relevant only to celebrities, crooks and spivs, and mistakenly believe that the main offshore problems are money laundering and terrorist financing. These are only small parts of the whole picture.
The offshore system has been (discreetly) responsible for the greatest ever shift of wealth from poor to rich. It also undermines our democracies by offering the wealthiest members of society escape routes from tax, financial regulation and other normal democratic controls.
The anti-globalisation movement tapped into an uneasiness, felt by millions, that something was rotten in the world economy. Treasure Islands brilliantly articulates the problem in a completely new way, and exposes the deep corruption that impacts on our daily lives.

Each week the oil and gas fields of sub-Saharan Africa produce well over a billion dollars' worth of oil, an amount that far exceeds development aid to the entire African continent. Yet the rising tide of oil money is not promoting stability and development, but is instead causing violence, poverty, and stagnation. It is also generating vast corruption that reaches deep into American and European economies. In "Poisoned Wells," Nicholas Shaxson exposes the root causes of this paradox of poverty from plenty, and explores the mechanisms by which oil causes grave instabilities and corruption around the globe. Shaxson is the only journalist who has had access to the key players in African oil, and is willing to make the connections between the problems of the developing world and the involvement of leading global corporations and governments.