The Bahamas has lost as much as $1.2 billion in illicit outflows over an eight-year period to one particular form of tax evasion, according to a Global Financial Integrity (GFI) analysis.
Corruption in the form of trade mispricing was a driver of that money lost, according to GFI’s latest report on “Illicit Financial Flows (IFF) from Developing Countries: 2000-2009”, which looked at the cost of crime, corruption, and trade mispricing on developing countries.
The Bahamas is ranked 97 on a global list for largest average normalized IFF estimates from 2000 to 2008 and 112 in a country ranking of non-normalized IFFs during the same period.
The report has calculated the dollar amount estimated on the outflow from trade mispricing from The Bahamas in 2008 alone to the tune of $240 million — a steady progress from the $57 million recorded in 2000, according to the report. In total, the country lost $1.14 billion in non-normalized IFF over the period, with an average lost of $127 million calculated per year. Around $1.09 billion is calculated for normalized IFFs.
