probablyasocialecologist:

Sanctions that target a few wealthy individuals are insufficient given it is a global system for the world’s elite―including Russian oligarchs―that allows for wealth to be hidden offshores away from the eyes of domestic and international regulators. The West is implicated in all this not only because that’s where the offshore hubs thrive, but that’s often where the assets themselves are stashed.

In 2018, researchers Annette Alstadsæter, Niels Johannesen, and Gabriel Zucman tried to estimate how much of each country’s wealth was hidden away through offshore structures―finding that while the equivalent of 10 percent of Earth’s GDP was held offshore, this obscured the dynamics of offshore wealth in any given society.

Spain and France, for example, hover around the world average of offshore wealth as a percentage of GDP (10 percent) but their wealthiest 0.01 percent hoard 4 to 5 percent of the country’s wealth and put 30 to 40 percent of those ill-gotten gains offshore. Russia, however, was wildly different: Its offshore wealth is equivalent to as much as 60 percent of the country’s GDP and its top 0.01 percent―who hoard 13 percent of the country’s wealth―park about 80 percent of their wealth offshore. That means that as the ruble craters thanks to the U.S. and E.U.-led sanctions, the pain will be felt primarily by everyone but Russia’s power elite, who are holding offshore assets in the West.