Ireland, UK and others are offshore ‘conduits’

Computer scientists have worked to uncover the way the Netherlands, the UK, Ireland, Singapore and Switzerland, in particular, are used by multinationals to channel investments onto well-known offshore centres (OFCs).

According to the research which was first reported by online journal Quartz, the five countries are used by multinationals to re-route capital to what it calls “sink” offshore centres to avoid tax.

Researchers Javier Garcia-Bernardo, Jan Fichtner, Frank Takes and Eelke Heemskerk said they identified new ways of detecting the conduits and the offshore centres by examining “complex” ownership structures of global firms.