A third of all internationally invested private wealth is kept in the tiny landlocked country of Switzerland, where tax evasion is not recognised as a crime.
But Switzerland is defiantly standing behind its policy of banking secrecy, despite a global attempt to crack down on tax havens.
Al Jazeera’s Hamish Macdonald reports.
Tax havens are widely blamed as one of the root causes of the global economic crisis.
At the annual G20 summit in April, world leaders promised to launch a crackdown on tax havens. But so far, little has changed and governments appear to be taking no responsibility.
Al Jazeera’s Hamish Macdonald begins his investigation in the European principality of Monaco.
Foreign leaders say the ultimate goal in Afghanistan is to improve the lives of ordinary people. For more than forty thousand children forced to survive by taking up work in Kabul, there’s little evidence of anything actually improving. Al Jazeera’s Hamish MacDonald has been meeting some of the children who sift through the capital’s rubbish for a living.