Description

This engrossing deep dive exposes how the shadowy global system of offshore finance fuels economic crises and austerity while also undermining democracy and the rule of law. Sociologist Brooke Harrington trained as an offshore wealth manager then spent years immersed in tax havens around the world, observing and interviewing the experts who keep the secrets and protect the fortunes of the global ultra-rich. In Offshore, she shows what offshore finance costs all of us and how it has colonised the world-not on behalf of any one country but to benefit a largely invisible empire of a few thousand billionaires who help themselves to the best society has to offer while sticking us with the bill. As politicians struggle to address the deepening economic and political inequality destabilising the world, Harrington’s expose of the offshore system is a vital resource for understanding the most pressing crises of our time.

Publisher Review

“A Financial Times best book of the year and one of The New Yorker’s “Political Books to Help Us Make Sense of 2024″” “Offshore centres sell secrecy. Such secrecy, [Brooke] Harrington argues, is indeed a source of wealth, but also a threat to law-governed democracy.” — Martin Wolf – Financial Times, ‘Best Books of 2024: Economics’ “You cannot understand the world of the super-rich without reading Brooke Harrington. Literary, intrepid and utterly original, she writes with insight and humour. Offshore is a portrait of plutocracy that is drawn not from statistics but from real-world encounters that the world almost never sees.” — Evan Osnos, The New Yorker staff writer and author of Wildland: The Making of America’s Fury