As traditional offshore havens like Switzerland tighten regulations and financial scrutiny, African elites and companies are increasingly turning to Asian financial hubs — notably Dubai, Singapore and Hong Kong — according to a recent University of Oxford

Capital flight exacts a heavy toll on African economies, with the continent haemorrhaging over $88 billion each year according to U.N. figures cited in the study. The three Asian financial centers are increasingly attractive destinations for this money and have become among “the fastest growing and most significant transnational connections for Africa.”

The study, a working paper that has not been peer-reviewed, was authored by Ricardo Soares de Oliveira, professor of political science at Sciences Po and a senior research fellow at Oxford.

The research “was motivated by the fact that African offshore links with Asian financial centres have massively increased over the past decade or so, but that there are few studies addressing this dynamic,” de Oliveira told the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists.

He said that: “While some financial centres have become more tightly regulated, and less accessible to African financial flows, other centers have come up to replace them. There is certainly no lack of supply to meet the demand, and no reason to believe that hiding money abroad has become more difficult.”

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Corruption As Equatorial Guinea burned through oil riches, millions were funneled to a company owned by its ‘playboy prince’ May 08, 2025

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And despite the shift towards Asia, Western jurisdictions and firms remain central players in the offshore world. The offshore industry is completely interwoven and both Western and Asian offshore centers, the report notes, “function in strikingly similar manners,” while Western blue-chip companies remain key players in Asian offshore markets.

Though the rise of the trio of Asian financial hubs is widely seen as “a new post-West business arrangement” unconstrained by “good governance moralizing” and “practical barriers,” the study suggests that these trends do not signal an entirely separate and competing offshore system.  Instead, this represents the expansion and diversification of an existing global offshore network.

Reforms to curb illicit financial flows, says de Oliveira, therefore “need to be truly global.”

“If they are not, tightening up in some jurisdictions merely shifts business away to other more permissive jurisdictions. If their home countries become more demanding, Western service providers are happy to follow the business and expand their footprint in the new locations.”

Europe must take a coordinated response to fight the rising threat of transnational repression, according to a group of experts commissioned by the European Parliament to investigate ways to counter this emerging form of cross-border authoritarian coercion.

A new study commissioned by the European Parliament

, which cites ICIJ’s China Targetsinvestigation, details a set of policy recommendations for the European Union and its member states aimed at closing gaps in protection and accountability.

Chief among recommendations are the development of an EU-wide definition of transnational repression, the creation of an internal data collection and knowledge hub on the issue within the bloc, and strengthened communication channels between member states’ law enforcement agencies.

“There is a need, broadly speaking, that there be more and better data collection on transnational repression, whether it is done at the multilateral or state level,” Nate Schenkkan, the lead author of the report, told ICIJ. “The knowledge drives action, so collecting the information and disseminating it is part of the process and policy framework of forcing those other stakeholders to address the issues.”

The report recommends strengthening data protection clauses in EU laws, including identifying transnational repression as a “systemic risk” that regulated platforms are responsible for under the Digital Services Act. It also calls for more aggressive action to counter transnational repression, including visa bans, the expulsion of diplomats, and swifter mobilization of sanctions.

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Bitpanda prides itself on being one of the most regulated crypto exchanges in Europe. The Austrian firm — backed by investors including billionaire Peter Thiel and reportedly planning for a listing on the Frankfurt stock exchange this year — has promoted its services with the slogan “secure, regulated and real.”

But reporting by Süddeutsche Zeitung, WDR and NDR, in Germany, and profil magazine, in Austria, found that internal auditors of Bitpanda’s German-licensed subsidiary, Bitpanda Asset Management GmbH, raised red flags last year about the Berlin firm’s operations. The warnings came months after the subsidiary had assured Germany’s Federal Financial Supervisory Authority, or BaFin, it had addressed concerns raised by the regulator following a routine audit.

The new findings by media partners of the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists are part of The Coin Laundry, an ICIJ-led exposé into the lightly regulated crypto industry. They highlight regulators’ difficulties in holding crypto companies to the same customer care and risk management standards as banks and other traditional financial institutions.

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