Kiribati (CU)_Kiribati is a tiny country in the center of the Pacific Ocean that consists of 33 islands. Of them, just 20 are inhabited. Kiribati has a population of less than 120,000, and the 2019–2020 Household Income and Expenditure Survey (HIES) indicates that the country’s median household income was under $12,000 in that year.
The population of the country is also extremely young, with a median age of 23 and 35% of people under the age of 15. But the average balance of the 876 Australian bank accounts that Kiribati residents reportedly maintained was close to $800,000.
Kiribati is not the only remote location where it appears that people, businesses, or trusts with Australian bank accounts are located. Tuvalu has 212 accounts registered to “residents” holding $194 million in Australia, with a population of 11,792 in 2020.
When compared to Tuvalu’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP), which is approximately $7,500 per person, that amounts to an average of more than $900,000 per account. There are 52 accounts belonging to citizens possessing $4 million were registered in Equatorial Guinea, in central Africa.
There’s $6.3 billion in accounts held in Australia by people, trusts, or organizations from the formerly infamous secrecy jurisdictions of Bermuda, Cayman Islands, British Virgin Islands, and Jersey. Each of these accounts often has more than $1 million in it.
“The latest data of accounts held in Australia from offshore continue to present red flags for money laundering and tax evasion,” according to the Tax Justice Network’s Mark Zirnsak.
A “beneficial ownership register,” which Labor has committed to implement, would make it more difficult for the individuals who own corporations to conceal who they are and what they get up to.
There have been calls for governments all around the world, including Australia’s, to establish a register that offers the public full access to the names of people behind businesses, trusts, assets, and bank accounts since the Panama Papers and several other tax dumps.
Mr. Zirnsak applauded Labor’s support for a public beneficial ownership record, noting that it might reveal who is behind corporations with Australian bank accounts.
“The government should also strengthen unexplained wealth laws, to be able to seize money shifted into Australia where there is a high likelihood the money has an illicit source,” Mr Zirnsak said.
“The new government should also act on the recommendations made by the recent parliamentary inquiry into money laundering, to reduce the ability of criminals to shift profits from crime into Australia.”
