BoingBoing: ‘The USA has moved up in the Tax Justice Network’s Financial Secrecy Index to number two, behind Switzerland; in reality, though, the UK is the world’s worst money-laundry, but because its laundering activities are spread out over its overseas territories — taken as a whole, the UK leads the world in helping criminals and looters hide their fortunes. America’s role in money-laundering is well-documented; the ease of incorporating anonymous shell companies has been key to making fortunes disappear — and they also constitute the wide end of the funnel for dark money in US politics. One notable feature of the Financial Secrecy Index is how different it is to official government indices of money-laundering states; the EU’s index, which put 17 nations on notice last December, consists primarily of small, largely impoverished nations that account for a tiny fraction of the world’s money laundering (the exception being the UK overseas territories, which are mentioned independent of the UK itself). Somehow, the EU list doesn’t include its own member-states’ prolific money-laundries, nor the money laundering in its major trading partners…”