Well-known economists, including Nobel laureates, seek to target hidden wealth of rich Russians

Several eminent economists, including French Thomas Piketty and American Joseph Stiglitz, in a letter urged G20 leaders to create a global asset registry to better target the hidden fortunes of Russian oligarchs. “The case of the Russian oligarchs is eloquent” In disguise of fate within opaque structures, these economists said in a letter published in the British daily The Guardian on Tuesday that the G20 leaders intended.

near them”At least $1 trillion in foreign assets”A group reflection, in particular, as outlined in a letter signed by Frenchmen Thomas Piketty and Gabriel Zuckman, as well as American Nobel laureate Joseph Stiglitz, all members of the Independent Commission for the Reform of International Corporate Taxation (ICRICT).

However, this fate is often hidden “In offshore companies whose real owners are difficult to determine”they continue, adding that “It is on this wall of ambiguity that today the efforts of countries to ban them come to the fore”.

Several big Russian fortunes have been targeted by Western sanctions following the Russian invasion of Ukraine, including Chelsea Football Club president Roman Abramovich or Rosneft’s boss Igor Sechin.

To go further, ICRICT calls for the establishment of a global register of assets, making it possible to “All kinds of properties, companies and other legal structures not linked to their legal owner, who is often just a mask, but the beneficial owner, the person who actually owns them”.

In order for sanctions to be more effective on and on all tax evaders in the world, it would thus be necessary to create a network that could link all the national asset registers of all the different types of money, where they may already be. Present. It ranges from bank accounts, real estate assets, crypto assets, works of art…

Following the example of a measure proposed in December by the World Inequality Lab, which relies on the Paris School of Economics, signatories propose states to collect this information at a national level, then gradually expand regionally and then cooperation. for the global level.

“Much more needs to be done to reform a failing international financial system that currently skews in favor of the wealthy champions of tax avoidance”They do acknowledge, however, that some progress has been made in recent years.

The paper was published on Wednesday on the occasion of G20 finance which will bring together all the richest countries in the world.