From the Seychelles to Liberia, African countries are creating financial centres that demand little or no taxation. Khadija Sharife provides a run-down of the places to hide away money from the taxman.

Petra Diamonds, the largest diamond-mining group listed on the UK's Alternative Investment Market (AIM), may deal in the glittering rocks that bring lovers together in holy matrimony. But the company’s activities behind the scenes may just be tearing people – and societies – apart, writes Khadija Sharife.

Media and entertainment giant Naspers ‘has engaged in the kind of “aggressive” tax planning devised to strategically move such assets into low-tax regions’, writes Khadija Sharife.

As multinational food processor Nestlé attempts to patent the well-known benefits of South Africa’s fynbos plants, Khadija Sharife explains the role tax havens play in enabling corporations to protect the value of intellectual property rights.

Using the example of apartheid South Africa, Khadija Sharife reveals the history of how huge oil companies have used flags of convenience in the shipping industry to secure corporate capitalism.

Using Norway-based Green Resources Ltd’s plantations as a case study, Khadija Sharife looks at whether clean development mechanism projects like those undertaken by Green Resources in East Africa can actually bring benefits to people on the ground.

With raised consumer awareness about green issues, forestry companies have
scrambled to acquire environmental certification. But as Khadija Sharife
investigates, the credentials of those who keep an eye on the process is often
murky.

http://www.pambazuka.org/images/articles/494/66650_swiss_bank_tmb.jpgRudolf Elmer, whistleblower and former CEO of Swiss bank Julius Baer’s Cayman Island operations, reveals the secrets of the murky world of offshore banking to Khadija Sharife. ‘Mauritius is in many ways the Switzerland of Africa,’ says Elmer, but there is another African nation vying to be the ‘golden’ financial gateway: Ghana.

Neither the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development nor the country’s government agree that Mauritius is a tax haven, but Khadija Sharife’s investigations suggest otherwise.