{"title":"Conclusions","authors":"J. Boyce, L. Ndikumana","doi":"10.1093/oso/9780198852728.003.0007","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780198852728.003.0007","url":null,"abstract":"This chapter summarizes the main messages from the book and distils key policy recommendations. The scale of capital flight from Angola, Côte d’Ivoire, and South Africa is large relative to the size of these economies, and it constitutes a drain on national resources, a handicap to economic growth, and a manifestation of the “resource curse.” Capital flight is the outcome of plunder by a network of actors and enablers, both domestic and foreign, facilitated by the opaque international financial system. The nexus between plunder and capital flight is not purely an internal problem of African countries; nor is it purely an international relationship in which an imperial power preys on faraway lands as in earlier centuries. Rather it is a transnational phenomenon that spans national boundaries, operated by a network of individuals and institutions who are bound together by mutual gain regardless of nationality. It is therefore clear that addressing the problem of capital flight requires a global strategy.","PeriodicalId":432298,"journal":{"name":"On the Trail of Capital Flight from Africa","volume":"12 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-01-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"124502970","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"International Trade and Capital Flight","authors":"Melvin D. Ayogu","doi":"10.1093/oso/9780198852728.003.0006","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780198852728.003.0006","url":null,"abstract":"The chapter examines the double-edged role of governance in capital flight. Focusing on international trade and trade-related financial transactions, the chapter demonstrates that the sword of governance has been wielded to cut predominantly one way—to facilitate capital flight—in key African countries. It highlights how poor governance enables capital flight and undermines the fight against it, while capital flight in turn erodes the quality of governance and weakens the regulatory system. The chapter describes the complexities governing import and export transactions, with a view to understanding how political, social, and economic arrangements facilitate corruption in general and capital flight in particular. It argues that “getting governance right” will require reforms in the management and oversight of international trade data to enhance quality, consistency, and transparency in data reporting and the exchange of information.","PeriodicalId":432298,"journal":{"name":"On the Trail of Capital Flight from Africa","volume":"24 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-01-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"122195628","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"South Africa","authors":"A. Aboobaker, K. Naidoo, L. Ndikumana","doi":"10.1093/oso/9780198852728.003.0005","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780198852728.003.0005","url":null,"abstract":"The chapter examines the mechanisms, actors, enablers, and institutional environment that have facilitated capital flight from South Africa and the attendant accumulation of offshore private wealth. It describes how capital flight has accelerated during the modern era of economic liberalization and rapid integration into the global economy. It highlights the systematic failure of the country’s regulatory system, which has been compromised by “state capture” orchestrated by an intricate network of private enablers with deep connections within the government and the global economy. It illustrates this phenomenon with the story of the Gupta family, which built its fortune by forging connections with key figures in government and parastatal companies in the mining and energy sectors and used a complex network of opaque transactions to move money out of the country. The chapter then discusses the adverse effects of capital flight on economic development, state institutions, and governance.","PeriodicalId":432298,"journal":{"name":"On the Trail of Capital Flight from Africa","volume":"1 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-01-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"130231676","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Capital Flight from Angola, Côte d’Ivoire, and South Africa","authors":"L. Ndikumana, J. Boyce","doi":"10.1093/oso/9780198852728.003.0002","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780198852728.003.0002","url":null,"abstract":"Chapter 2 presents quantitative estimates of capital flight for the three case study countries: Angola, Côte d’Ivoire, and South Africa. In addition, it delves into one of its important elements, trade misinvoicing. The latter can lead to upward or downward revisions of capital flight measures derived from the balance-of-payments residual, depending on the relative magnitudes of misinvoicing for capital flight and misinvoicing for tariff evasion. Prolonged capital flight has led to the accumulation of massive offshore wealth in the hands of the economic and political elites of these countries, even as their populations continue to face deprivation in access to basic services. In all three African countries, capital flight is a major obstacle to development financing that needs to be tackled through coordinated national and international strategies.","PeriodicalId":432298,"journal":{"name":"On the Trail of Capital Flight from Africa","volume":"31 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-01-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"117280273","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Angola","authors":"N. Shaxson","doi":"10.1093/oso/9780198852728.003.0003","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780198852728.003.0003","url":null,"abstract":"Despite active exploitation of its vast oil reserves, Angola has failed to invest in a diversified and sustainable economy and to improve the lives of its people, most of whom continue to live in extreme poverty. This chapter explores the question: where did the money go? It examines how the “resource curse” contributed to a protacted and destructive civil war, and how a large chunk of Angola’s wealth ended up overseas in the hands of a relatively small number of politically well-placed individuals, enabled by a transnational network of intermediaries and enablers. This tragic money drain is a story that Angola shares with many other resource-rich African countries.","PeriodicalId":432298,"journal":{"name":"On the Trail of Capital Flight from Africa","volume":"14 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-01-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"130243398","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Côte d’Ivoire","authors":"Jean Merckaert","doi":"10.1093/oso/9780198852728.003.0004","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780198852728.003.0004","url":null,"abstract":"The chapter tells the story of capital flight from Côte d’Ivoire, focusing on the cocoa sector. The impressive economic growth fueled by cocoa exports after independence, once hailed as the “Ivorian miracle,” evaporated after the collapse of cocoa prices and the explosion of foreign debt. As the country plunged into an economic crisis, followed by a political crisis that culminated in civil war, the primary commodity sector continued to be highly vulnerable to illicit financial flows. The chapter traces the continuities and changes across political regimes since independence in the mechanisms of resource rent capture and personal enrichment and the roles of the key national and foreign players. It shows how the patronage nexus linking state power to market power contributed to large-scale capital flight and the failure of the country to take full advantage of its natural resource endowments.","PeriodicalId":432298,"journal":{"name":"On the Trail of Capital Flight from Africa","volume":"17 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2016-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"124928034","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}