Offshore: Stealth Wealth and the New Colonialism

2024, W.W. Norton

This engrossing deep dive exposes how the shadowy global system of offshore finance fuels economic crises and austerity while also undermining democracy and the rule of law. Sociologist Brooke Harrington trained as an offshore wealth manager then spent years immersed in tax havens around the world, observing and interviewing the experts who keep the secrets and protect the fortunes of the global ultra-rich. She shows what offshore finance costs all of us, and how it has colonized the world—not on behalf of any one country, but to benefit a largely invisible empire of a few thousand billionaires who help themselves to the best society has to offer while sticking us with the bill. As politicians struggle to address the deepening economic and political inequality destabilizing the world, Harrington’s exposé of the offshore system is a vital resource for understanding the most pressing crises of our time.

“You cannot understand the world of the super-rich without reading Brooke Harrington. Literary, intrepid, and utterly original, she writes with insight and humor. Offshore is a portrait of plutocracy that is drawn not from statistics but from real-world encounters that the world almost never sees.”
– Evan Osnos New Yorker staff writer and author of Wildland

“A riveting and eye-opening dive into the offshore world by a sociologist who, through participant observation methods, has revolutionized the study of the subject. This book is a must read for anyone concerned about the future of inequality and the future of democracy.”
– Gabriel Zucman, author of The Hidden Wealth of Nations

“At a time when autocracies are proliferating, and with them practices of institutionalized theft and corruption, sociologist and certified wealth manager Brooke Harrington reveals the workings of the secretive offshore system that props up autocrats and damages democracies around the world. An essential read for our times.”
– Ruth Ben-Ghiat, author of Strongmen