These case studies proffer a disaggregated and institutional analysis of the channels, mechanisms, drivers, actors and enablers of capital flight.
The book shows how capital flight is facilitated by what the authors refer to as ‘‘transnational plunder networks’’, a combination of both domestic elites, key among them being kleptocrats and big corporations, and a global network of enablers including bankers, accountants, lawyers and politicians who not only facilitate the movement of capital from Africa, but also its concealment in offshore secrecy jurisdictions.
The book begins by presenting the meaning and context of capital flight from Africa in a lucid and commonsensical introduction. It presents it as the phenomenon when money or assets leave a country without being registered in the official statistics. For example, where money is transferred from a country in Africa to a private bank in an offshore financial centre or any bank in Europe or America without being registered at the central bank or as an outflow of either investment or savings.
The book then provides the estimates of the volumes of capital flight from the three case studies. It pays particular attention to the problem of trade misinvoicing and tax evasion, the two most critical mechanisms of illicit financial flows.‘‘involves the deliberate falsification of the value, volume, and/or type of commodity in an international commercial transaction of goods or services by at least one party to the transaction”.