Economists including Piketty and Stiglitz want to target the hidden money of wealthy Russians

Europe 1 with AFP 3:50 p.m., April 19, 2022

Several renowned economists, including Frenchman Thomas Piketty and American Joseph Stiglitz, urge G20 leaders in a letter to create a global asset registry to better target the hidden fortunes of Russian oligarchs.

"The case of the Russian oligarchs is eloquent" in the concealment of fortunes within opaque structures, say these economists in a letter published Tuesday in the British daily The Guardian for the leaders of the G20.

A wall of opacity

They hold "at least 1,000 billion dollars of wealth abroad", according to the estimates relayed in the letter, signed in particular by the French Thomas Piketty and Gabriel Zucman, as well as the American Nobel Prize winner Joseph Stiglitz, all members of the Commission International Corporate Tax Reform (ICRICT), a think tank.

However, these fortunes are often hidden "in offshore companies whose true owners are difficult to determine", they continue, adding that "it is precisely on this wall of opacity that the efforts of countries to sanction".

Several large Russian fortunes have been targeted by Western sanctions after the Russian invasion of Ukraine, including the president of the Chelsea football club Roman Abramovich or the boss of Rosneft Igor Sechin.

To go further, the ICRICT calls for the establishment of a global register of assets, making it possible to "link all types of assets, companies and other legal structures not to their legal owner, who does not is often just a facade, but to the beneficial owner, the person who actually owns them".

“Much remains to be done to reform the international financial system”

In order to be more effective on sanctions and on all of the tax evaders in the world, it would thus be necessary to create a network connecting all the national asset registers of all the different forms of wealth that an individual can possess, where they already exist.

This ranges from bank accounts, real estate assets, cryptoassets, works of art...

Following the example of a measure proposed in December by the World Inequality Lab which depends on the Paris School of Economics, the signatories propose to the States to collect this information at the national level, then gradually to extend the cooperation to the regional and then global scale.

"Much remains to be done to reform a failing international financial system that is currently biased in favor of wealthy champions of tax avoidance," they write, acknowledging some progress in recent years, however.

The publication of this letter comes on the occasion of the G20 Finances on Wednesday which will bring together all of the richest countries in the world.