Mike Quigley Quotes

If you look around in London, there is a lot of dirty money. People see it as a safe haven: a bolthole to rely on if they are criminal or politically exposed in their own country.

Reliable numbers about the amount of dirty money around the world are difficult to come by. But according to an estimate by the nonprofit Global Financial Integrity group, $1 trillion vanishes from the developing world's economies every year.

I'm tired of seeing the press equate Monaco with money laundering.

Why do tax havens exist? Because rich countries allow them to. If the U.S. came down on tax havens in the same way they come down on countries that trade with Iran and Cuba, we'd have no tax havens in the world.

It's interesting that Swiss banks also hide their assets from the Swiss by using offshore bank structuring.

There will be huge scandals because there is too much money washing around …. And we don’t know who’s behind it.

Shell companies can be owned by other shell companies; opaque offshore vehicles are carefully designed so that regulators can't identify who is using them; with the right accountants, they can be set up quickly and easily.

We shouldn't be encouraging people to set up Cayman Island funds.

A holding company is the people you give your money to while you're being searched.

I think that a lot of the money - these big bills - is used to facilitate tax evasion and crime.

The massive corruption common in so many developing countries would be quite impossible if Western countries did not provide convenient opportunities to ship ill-gotten funds out of the country. It wouldn't make much sense for a ruler to store in his basement large quantities of stolen cash in his own country's currency. A corrupt ruler wants to be able to keep this money safe and to be able to spend it. And for this, he needs to convert it into a Western currency and store it in a bank abroad, where it can also earn investment returns and be bequeathed to his heirs.

The Latin American debt that reached crisis levels from 1982 would have been sharply reduced by return of flight capital - in some cases, overcome, though all figures are dubious for these secret and often illegal operations.

We have never heard of laundering in Macau; money laundering is unheard of. Mind you, my casino, every bit of money - someone says Stanley Ho, you issue me a check of so much money - we don't give that easy.

Corruption, money laundering, and tax evasion are global problems, not just challenges for developing countries.

In 25 years of exile, I've never had a frozen account, either in Switzerland or elsewhere in the world.

To prohibit the Exportation of Money, in that it is a thing almost impracticable, it is almost nugatory and vain.

We know India is very focussed on black money; it is a very high-focus subject and we have been very careful to make sure the investments into India are legitimate. There is no 'round-tripping' or hot money or bad money being funnelled through Singapore.

Because it started as an offshoot of al Qaeda in Iraq, ISIL has long been subject to U.N. sanctions, and all countries have a legal obligation to freeze its assets and prohibit its business dealings. But countries around the world need to do more to make these sanctions work.

A very small proportion of the country's black money is in the movie industry. Because we are written about, public attention is focused on us. Do you think there is no black money in other businesses? With the exception of government servants and others who have tax deducted at source, there are tax evaders in every walk of life.

As she was about to run for president in 2008, Clinton opposed a free-trade agreement with Panama - an agreement that, as Sanders pointed out, would make the kind of money-laundering we learned about from the Panama papers even more pervasive.

Collective European Union action could mean no hiding places for evaders, no safe haven for tax avoiders, and no treasure islands for money launderers.

Economically, ISIS is making money every day on the black market with their oil fields. But they are also putting money in banks. We know where those banks are. We should go after the banks and the facilitators using them.

Plutocrats worldwide have readily understood the advantages of evading the burdens of the nation-state.

Black money is a cancer in our economic system, not yet terminal or life-threatening.

The black money issue should not be misunderstood as one of merely avoiding taxes. It is, in fact, a major systemic crime of denying the nation's financial system the proceeds of wealth. Such denial should actually be declared as treason, where opportunities to share the wealth for the benefit of the poor are wilfully denied.