Two million corporations and limited liability companies are formed every year in the US with no one knowing who the beneficial owners are.
“Right now, a person forming a US corporation or limited liability company provides less information to the state than is required to open a bank account or obtain a driver’s license,” Democratic Senator Carl Levin said last year.
Welcome to America’s dirty little secret: the states of Wyoming, Nevada and in particular Delaware, where financial disclosure requirements are minimal. Delaware has come under scrutiny from Swiss bankers, who argue it provides the same levels of secrecy as they do.
Washington insiders say that while there are problems with Delaware’s business disclosure laws, they are expected to be addressed soon. And they argue that, unlike Switzerland, Delaware does not have a history of touting for overseas business using its facility to avoid tax as a selling point.
But while Obama leads the fight to combat tax evasion in offshore centers, recent studies indicate he should be looking closer to home.
Jason Sharman, professor of the center for governance and public policy at Griffith University in Australia, tried to set up shell companies in 22 countries. Surprisingly, the easiest places to retain secrecy were the US and Britain.
Sharman attempted to set up anonymous shell companies 45 times. In 17 cases, the service providers provided the requested shell without bothering to check on the actual identity of the client. And it was not expensive: US$550 to US$1,900. Shockingly, seven shells were provided in Great Britain, four in the US, one in Spain and one in Canada.
The conflict in the Middle East has been disrupting financial markets, raising concerns about rising inflationary pressures and global economic growth. One market that some investors are particularly worried about has not been heavily covered in the news: the private credit market. Even before the joint US-Israeli attacks on Iran on Feb. 28, global capital markets had faced growing structural pressure — the deteriorating funding conditions in the private credit market. The private credit market is where companies borrow funds directly from nonbank financial institutions such as asset management companies, insurance companies and private lending platforms. Its popularity has risen since
The Donald Trump administration’s approach to China broadly, and to cross-Strait relations in particular, remains a conundrum. The 2025 US National Security Strategy prioritized the defense of Taiwan in a way that surprised some observers of the Trump administration: “Deterring a conflict over Taiwan, ideally by preserving military overmatch, is a priority.” Two months later, Taiwan went entirely unmentioned in the US National Defense Strategy, as did military overmatch vis-a-vis China, giving renewed cause for concern. How to interpret these varying statements remains an open question. In both documents, the Indo-Pacific is listed as a second priority behind homeland defense and
Every analyst watching Iran’s succession crisis is asking who would replace supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Yet, the real question is whether China has learned enough from the Persian Gulf to survive a war over Taiwan. Beijing purchases roughly 90 percent of Iran’s exported crude — some 1.61 million barrels per day last year — and holds a US$400 billion, 25-year cooperation agreement binding it to Tehran’s stability. However, this is not simply the story of a patron protecting an investment. China has spent years engineering a sanctions-evasion architecture that was never really about Iran — it was about Taiwan. The
In an op-ed published in Foreign Affairs on Tuesday, Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairwoman Cheng Li-wun (鄭麗文) said that Taiwan should not have to choose between aligning with Beijing or Washington, and advocated for cooperation with Beijing under the so-called “1992 consensus” as a form of “strategic ambiguity.” However, Cheng has either misunderstood the geopolitical reality and chosen appeasement, or is trying to fool an international audience with her doublespeak; nonetheless, it risks sending the wrong message to Taiwan’s democratic allies and partners. Cheng stressed that “Taiwan does not have to choose,” as while Beijing and Washington compete, Taiwan is strongest when
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