The report, entitled The Price of Offshore Revisited, which was commissioned by The Tax Justice Network campaign group and leaked to the Guardian, provides the most detailed valuation of the offshore economy to date.
The findings show the gap between the haves and the have-nots is much larger than previously thought.
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James Henry, expert on tax havens and former chief economist at consultancy McKinsey in his report stated, "The problem here is that the assets of these countries are held by a small number of wealthy individuals while the debts are shouldered by the ordinary people of these countries through their governments."
Further, the document cites the world’s leading private banks as cherry-picking from the ranks of the upper-rich and siphoning their fortunes into tax-free havens such as Switzerland and the Cayman Islands.
Henry also writes that a large part of the trillion dollar hoard belongs to around 92,000 individuals, an elite class of super-rich who make up 0.001% of the global population.
"These estimates reveal a staggering failure: inequality is much, much worse than official statistics show, but politicians are still relying on trickle-down to transfer wealth to poorer people," said John Christensen of the Tax Justice Network.
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