March 2022, on the Tuscan coast. As Russia invades Ukraine and Westerners announce they will freeze all assets of the Russian president and Kremlin-friendly oligarchs, a $600 million super-yacht believed to belong to Vladimir Putin parades in the seaside resort of Marina di Carrara. The Cayman-flagged vessel is taunting Italian customs because it is backed by a shell company created in the Marshall Islands, which makes it impossible to identify its owner.
In Offshore. Behind the edifying scenes of tax havens, published by Les liens qui liberantes, Renaud van Ruymbeke, the former anti-corruption magistrate who retired in 2019, places this scene at the start of his story. She vividly illustrates the substance of her argument: how the European Union and, beyond that, the whole of the international community today find themselves trapped in opaque territories that they have long allowed to prosper.
That a political act as strong as the implementation of sanctions in time of war, and in this case this hunt for Russian assets, comes up against the pitfall of offshore companies is not to surprise the former judge of instruction. Positioned at the forefront of the fight against corruption and money laundering for twenty years, Renaud van Ruymbeke spent thousands of hours at the financial center of the Paris court, dissecting the illicit financial circuits used by criminals in white collar or mafia networks.
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However, from the secret financing of parties to complex tax evasion, through the payment of bribes on the sidelines of international arms contracts, all the major cases for which he was responsible come together on one point: l use of accounts or entities created in more or less exotic territories practicing zero tax and banking secrecy, from Luxembourg to Dubai, operating as screens in relation to the authorities, tax authorities, police, justice.
From the Boulin case in 1979 to the Karachi and Balkany cases (his last case), the former judge takes the reader to the heart of his major investigations. While he tried to “follow the money” – the French translation of the famous Anglo-Saxon adage “follow the money”, showing that a well-conducted investigation consists of tracing the origin of the funds or following their destination – Renaud van Ruymbeke has seen opacification techniques become more and more sophisticated.
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