Global Dodgeball: How Tax Shelters, Crypto Unicorns, and Maltese Passports Became the World’s Favorite Escape Route

Dodgers: The Art of Slipping Away, From Tokyo Tax Shelters to Mediterranean Deck Chairs
By Our Correspondent, Still Counting the Empty Seats

GENEVA—The word “dodger” once evoked muddy Brooklyn baseball and the crack of post-war innocence. Today it is a cosmopolitan chameleon, changing its accent in every time zone. In Hong Kong it answers to “consultant,” in Zurich to “fiduciary,” and in London—after a stiff gin—to “non-dom.” Wherever you find it, the dodger is the same species: a creature that has mastered the only truly universal language, that of creative absence.

Consider the global taxonomy. The tax dodger, that perennial Davos favorite, siphons off roughly 483 billion USD annually, according to the latest IMF shrug-emoji. That’s enough to vaccinate every child in the world twice, or—more realistically—buy 483 new super-yachts equipped with mini-hospitals and a tax-deductible champagne spa. Meanwhile the draft dodger is back in vogue from Seoul to Moscow as Generation Z discovers that wars, like everything else, are now outsourced to the gig economy. Why die for your country when you can simply Door-Dash your patriotism?

Climate dodgers are the freshest bloom on this noxious bouquet. They land at COP summits in carbon-neutral private jets, pledge net-zero by 2050, then scurry back to portfolios dripping with coal. The trick is to emit in the subjunctive mood: “We would have polluted, had we not purchased these Rwandan offsets that definitely exist.” By the time the rainforest is counted—usually after it has burned—the dodge has already been amortized.

Naturally, technology has industrialized the getaway. Crypto mixers, NFT shell games, and ransomware “service providers” now allow the aspiring dodger to vanish faster than a Belgrade nightclub receipt. Last month a Slovenian hacker identified only as “McBanksy” laundered 72 million USD through a digital portrait of a vomiting unicorn, thereby proving that art criticism is now a regulated banking activity. Interpol’s response was to issue a strongly worded JPEG.

But let us not romanticize the lone wolf. Entire states have turned dodging into soft power. The United Kingdom—remember them?—built an economy on welcoming whichever kleptocrat lost last week’s revolution. British libel lawyers are the Sherpas of moral escapism, guiding oligarchs up the slippery slope of reputation management until the summit glows with a life-size statue of “philanthropy.” Across the Channel, Ireland discovered that a leprechaun is simply a multinational that knows the way to the mailbox where its patents holiday. The Double Irish is now dead, but fear not: the Single Malt lives on, aged 12 years in a Delaware barrel and bottled in Singapore.

What does it mean for the rest of us, the non-dodging plebeians stranded in geography? First, that citizenship itself is becoming a subscription service. For 150,000 USD you can buy a Maltese passport and Schengen-hop like a bored rabbit; for 2 million USD Cyprus will even throw in a matching scandal. Second, that the social contract now has an opt-out clause written in invisible ink. The pandemic taught every government that borders are real only for the poor; the wealthy simply activate Plan B (Barbados, Bermuda, or a bunker in New Zealand). When the missiles fly, the dodgers will already be in the air, sipping pre-departure mimosas at 45,000 feet and tuning the in-flight entertainment to “Thoughts & Prayers, Channel 9.”

And yet, for all the satellites and sanction regimes, the dodger still depends on our collective shrug. Every shell company needs a bored clerk, every looted masterpiece needs a gallerist with “provenance issues,” every dictator needs a therapist—sorry, “brand consultant.” The ecosystem runs on the oldest currency: plausible deniability, minted daily in the human heart.

So the next time you see a headline about “cracking down,” remember the etymology. A crack is narrow by definition; plenty of room to slip through if you’re greasy enough. The dodger will always be with us, evolving like a virus in a silk tie. The rest of us can only stand at the gate, boarding pass clutched in trembling hand, watching the departure screen flicker to that final destination: Accountability, Delayed Indefinitely.