On 20 December, ICIJ published an article saying the schemes consisting of a Wyoming trust and layers of private companies with concealed ownership— allow the world’s wealthy to move and spend money in extraordinary secrecy, protected by some of the strongest privacy laws in the country and, in some cases, without even the cursory oversight performed by regulators in other states. In recent years, families from India to Italy to Venezuela have abandoned international financial centres for law firms in Wyoming’s ski resorts and mining towns, helping to turn the state into one of the world’s top tax havens. Trust companies in Wyoming now manage at least $31.5 billion in assets, according to the state. However, the article says that hoped-for tax revenue from the boom did not materialise, as the Republican legislature rebuffed calls for even a small tax on the profits of companies that create trusts.
