Issue cover

Vol. 1 No. 1 (2025): Volume 1, Issue 1 (2025)

View Issue TOC

Offshore Predation: Illicit Financial Flows and Beneficial Ownership Opacity in Resource-Rich African States.

Abraham Kuol Nyuon
DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.19603704
Published: April 16, 2026

Abstract

Resource predation in fragile states is often attributed to domestic corruption, yet much of it depends on transnational financial systems that enable wealth extraction to move across jurisdictions. In resource-rich African contexts, elite accumulation is sustained through offshore secrecy, complex corporate structures, and permissive legal environments that make illicit wealth both portable and difficult to trace. The concept of offshore predation captures how these global financial infrastructures interact with weak domestic governance to facilitate large-scale extraction. Situated within debates on the political economy of corruption and global financial governance, the manuscript examines how international systems enable and sustain resource diversion. Focusing on South Sudan and Angola, with comparative reference to Nigeria, the study addresses three interrelated questions: what legal and financial mechanisms—including transfer mispricing, shell company networks, offshore trusts, and correspondent banking relationships—enable the diversion of oil revenues into private accounts; how international financial centres such as London, Dubai, Delaware, and Luxembourg provide the legal, institutional, and professional infrastructure that sustains illicit financial flows, and what forms of responsibility they bear; and what the developmental consequences of these flows are in terms of foregone public investment, weakened fiscal capacity, and their interaction with aid dependence. Methodologically, the study combines financial investigative analysis using Global Financial Integrity data, leaked materials such as the Pandora Papers, Africa Confidential reporting, court records from UK and US anti-corruption proceedings, and corporate registry analysis. It further incorporates

Full Text:

Read the Full Article

The HTML galley is loaded below for inline reading and better discovery.

How to Cite

Abraham Kuol Nyuon (2026). Offshore Predation: Illicit Financial Flows and Beneficial Ownership Opacity in Resource-Rich African States.. African Peace Studies (Political Science focus), Vol. 1 No. 1 (2025): Volume 1, Issue 1 (2025). https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.19603704

Keywords

Illicit financial flowsbeneficial ownershipcorruptionSouth SudanAngolaoffshore financenatural resources

Research Snapshot

Desktop reading view
Language
EN
Formats
HTML + PDF
Publication Track
Vol. 1 No. 1 (2025): Volume 1, Issue 1 (2025)
Current Journal
African Peace Studies (Political Science focus)

References