Offshore havens and hidden riches of world leaders and billionaires exposed in unprecedented leak.
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Just because UK and US formed recently new military pact AKUS, it doesn’t mean that US is not fighting a financial power of City of London 
this is an interesting topic for me because I am not sure of my position. probably because I am not sure of the right course of action given a real problem - money laundering of assets acquired in harmful activities.
the tension is between stopping human trafficking, the illegal drug trade, tax dodging, financial theft and fraud, corruption etc, versus limiting the freedom and privacy of regular people following the rules.
presently states are competing to offer the most financial anonymity. offshore is best done in the USA.
from the above link:
"South Dakota trusts provide precisely the kind of anonymity that clients are looking for. Not only can those establishing trusts list themselves as beneficiaries—contradicting the original purpose of a trust, which is to shield assets for others—but they don’t even need to visit the state to set one up. The state prohibits sharing information about these trusts with other governments, and any court documents pertaining to South Dakota trusts are kept private in perpetuity. More important, South Dakota pioneered regulations that allow its trusts (which typically expire after a century or so) to remain in place forever, forming the bedrock for dynastic wealth.
[Read: Why tax havens are political and economic disasters]
State officials say they’re keeping a close eye on any signs of questionable figures or finance flocking to the state. “We’re certainly always worried about the black eye of one nefarious actor, one money-laundering or white-collar crime, that somehow utilized our trust industry to commit wrongful acts,” says Tom Simmons, a trust-law expert at the University of South Dakota and a member of the state’s Trust Task Force, which helps steer the state’s pro-anonymity legislation. “It’s not the Wild West.”
In a sense, though, that’s precisely what it is. The Wild West technically had regulations on its books too—not that they stopped the railroad barons and crooked bankers from bending local laws to their own will, devastating communities along the way. Which is what the entire offshoring world, including South Dakota, has been doing on a progressively global scale.
So what should be done about all this? Although the U.S. has made significant headway in recent months when it comes to shell-company transparency, it’s continued to drop the ball regarding transparency for other financial entities. These include the anonymous, perpetual trusts South Dakota has spearheaded, but that’s hardly the only industry profiting from America’s evolution into the world’s greatest offshore haven. Real estate continues to be the country’s biggest sponge for anonymous, ill-gotten wealth, while hedge funds and private equity have ballooned in recent years to offshore destinations of their own. Along the way, America’s art market, auction houses, and luxury-goods dealers have all gotten in on the action—aided by the American lawyers, consultants, and accountants who can work with as much dirty money as they want, thanks to a range of loopholes and exemptions.
The U.S. is long overdue for an overhaul of its entire approach to stopping money laundering. As revealing a glimpse as the Pandora Papers provide, the ICIJ’s reporting represents a narrow slice of the suspicious wealth flowing directly into the heart of the American financial system—all of it looking to be hidden from prying eyes, and in many cases laundered, right here in the United States of Anonymity."