A closer look
The most devastating bank robbers in the world don't use guns; they use Microsoft Excel and shipping manifests. Trade misinvoicing is an incredibly simple but catastrophic fraud. If a company exports copper from Zambia, they deliberately underprice the value on the official invoice submitted to the local government, paying almost zero taxes. Once the copper leaves the port, they sell it at full market value through a shell company in a tax haven. It is a quiet, bureaucratic method of economically bleeding the developing world dry.
