In October 2021, the Pandora Papers were published. They reveal that wealthy people, including government officials, royals, and celebrities are hiding their money all over the world in tax havens. They use shell companies, trusts, and foundations to do this.
The United States is among the premiere locations for hiding money, and New Hampshire leads the group of states that provide this service.
The New Hampshire legislature actually boasts that they are the premiere location in the union for this service.
Why is New Hampshire the premiere location for hiding the wealth of the world?
- It seems that because of a lack of government oversight, the people who stash their money in New Hampshire are not being investigated.
- Furthermore, due to legislative efforts, New Hampshire actually has established and encouraged the formation of foundations. This is not a legal apparatus that other states have.
- Finally, New Hampshire doesn’t even require a physical presence for any trust funds, foundations, or businesses to be established in our state. All you have to do is provide a mailing address to claim that the money is in New Hampshire. Because of this, New Hampshire doesn’t even benefit from these trust funds, foundations, or businesses, because no jobs are created.
How much money is in New Hampshire?
The Pandora Papers say that $932.5 billion are hidden in trusts in New Hampshire. The papers connect Dartmouth College, St Pauls School, Phillips Exeter Academy and AutoFair.
What is New Hampshire’s incentive to hide all of this money? If there is government oversight, how do they investigate these trusts? Are they prosecuting Auto Fair for being a shell company?
Easy fix to our problem
One article I read said that there is a fairly simple way to stop the flood of illegal money coming into our state. All we need to do is require lawyers who set up these trusts funds, foundations and companies to do their due diligence to make sure the money is legit. Then, we could prosecute the lawyer.
Why isn’t our government requiring that? That would be an easy fix to make sure criminals couldn’t hide and launder money in our state.
Read more on NHPR and transparency.org.
We need your help. Ask our government to investigate these papers.
We can’t let these papers just slide under the rug. We need to use them to reform our government and bring people to justice.
