Yacht Crock

So you want to repossess a yacht. The first step is pretty hard. Find the yacht. The second part is a lot harder. Prove which oligarch owns the yacht. To do that you’ll need to dig through a global economy very much distinct from the one most of us operate in (or are even aware of). It’s where drug cartels launder money. It’s where authoritarian regimes move their ill-begotten gains. It’s where arms dealers and terrorists work around pesky international laws and sanctions. “Though it’s often called a system, the offshore world is really more of an archipelago — a constellation of territories and nations operating with the same general aim of helping wealthy people move and hide their money. This world encompasses places as diverse as Hong Kong, Dubai, the Isle of Man, South Dakota and Curaçao and includes not only notorious tax havens like Switzerland and the Cayman Islands but also institutions and jurisdictions in the hearts of the countries that usually rank highest in global transparency indexes.” NYT Mag (Gift Article) with a very interesting glimpse into that other economy. How to Hide a 350-Foot Megayacht. And spoiler-alert. The other economy has a new participant and proponent. He’s in America’s Oval Office. “Amid the fracas, it would have been easy to miss two lines, buried on the fourth page of a Justice Department memo, circulated two weeks into Trump’s second term: An interagency task force, colorfully named KleptoCapture, would be disbanded. Though KleptoCapture was hardly a household name, its demise was portentous — it indicated the administration’s unwillingness to fight the financial systems that not only allow Kremlin allies to disguise their wealth but also enable international drug cartels to operate with impunity, corrupt officials to launder money from bribes into luxury real estate and the ultrawealthy to avoid paying taxes.”