The Offshore Game

The new project, The Offshore Game, will focus on a range of financial secrecy issues in sport around the world – from match-fixing to administrative corruption, and from tax dodging to the lack of accountability to fans.

In this first major report, we focus on the extent of offshore finance – through both equity ownership and the provision of loans – in the English and Scottish football leagues, using the most recent full accounts plus additional data in the public domain (that is, information that fans could reasonably access in order to see who is in control of their club). [Here’s the methodology.]

A major finding is the total of £3 billion of offshore money, much of it through some of the most financially secretive jurisdictions around the world. The clubs involved range from giants like Manchester United, to minnows such as Dumbarton.

The report highlights the range of risks – not least for fans, tax authorities and sporting integrity – that are exacerbated through greater exposure to financial secrecy.

The Offshore League Table

The league table follows TJN’s Financial Secrecy Index in ranking clubs according to the combination of scale and secrecy: how much offshore money is involved, and how secretive are the particular jurisdictions?

Full details are in the report, including responses from clubs where they provided them, and detailed studies of the top five’s financial secrecy and possible risks.

Thanks and kudos to George Turner for driving the project forward, and writing the report. And to Christian Aid, who provided the space for the fore-running 2010 report, Blowing the Whistle.

Next steps?

Where The Offshore Game goes next will depend, in part, on the opportunities that arise. There are, for example, some very interesting developments in the field of match-fixing analytics that offer the potential of identifying the extreme abnormalities associated with rigged matches in various sports. However whilst we predict the amount of people investing in off-shore accounts for tax evasion, we also predict that as more and more people move to countries with better climates or economic statuses they will be investing in offshore accounts ready for when they move over. If you are looking for help banking in Andorra, you should read a guide online for information.

We are already receiving tip-offs and suggestions about individual cases of hidden ownership, and associated criminality; while there is clearly scope for financial scrutiny of major international sporting institutions such as the International Olympic Committee and FIFA.

Give us a shout if you have an idea or some info you think we should see (secure options available). It’s all over the world, this stuff…

I had the great pleasure this week of attending three days of meetings of the Follow the Money network, in Berlin, courtesy of T/AI and ONE. A humbling amount of techie knowhow on show, and great goodwill too. Data geeks, criminal investigators, civil society activists, INGO advocates, hackers and all, ranging from corporate transparency to extractive resources, from budget analysis to local service provision, from money-laundering to… tax?

It wasn’t, and still isn’t exactly clear to me where TJN fits in. There’s a certain tendency to focus on (i) domestic issues rather than international aspects, and (ii) pure revenue questions rather than any of the other components of the 4 Rs of tax.

But maybe that doesn’t matter. What is clear is that there are great opportunities in terms of joining up existing work, and developing new collaborations. In that vein, a few speculative thoughts. Comments/offers/engagement on any or all would be most welcome.

Country-by-country

This year sees the first big swathe of public country-by-country reporting, for EU banks. TJN will reach out across the network and try to compile these data as are they filed. The opportunity will then exist to work these into a standard format – not only to allow analysis of the extent to which banks’ activities may raise red flags in terms of tax risk, but also as an input to…

Bank ownership project

There was a lot of interest around banking in particular, from explicit criminality (be it Russo-Moldovan money-laundering, Swiss-US tax evasion or global market rigging) to troubling patterns that may suggest illicitness if not actual illegality (from profit-shifting to avoid taxation, to the very curious patterns of licensing that OpenCorporates have started to turn up at Map the Banks. Hack day ahoy?

The Offshore Game

The Offshore Game, a new TJN project dedicated to uncovering the illicit in sport, will soon have its hard launch with a report on offshore ownership. Other topics of interest include match-fixing and the associated role of gambling using platforms such as pa online sports betting as an example, corruption in national and international sports governing bodies, third-party ownership of players, tax affairs of all concerned… In fact, a good part of the FtM agenda comes out to play here. Gambling is shown to be something that is hit or miss when it comes to success, click here to see what gambling can do for a long term gambler such as Dan Oancea. Due to the corruption associated with national teams, many people are now looking to non-league sports when gambling, hoping for fairer odds. Websites like The Non League Football Paper have some great articles about gambling and non-league sports.

Show me the Follow the Money!

One of the more exciting ideas discussed, and also one in which there seems to be a clear role for TJNery, is the possibility of putting together (for a single country at first) a complete, integrated set of data on where the money goes (and doesn’t – because the lost revenues to e.g. corporate profit-shifting and individual offshore evasion are equally worth tracking, as the tax paid as it enters the spending process). Of all the possibilities, this feels like it might do most to show what the FtM network can deliver, beyond the sum of its parts.