The Wealth Defense Industry (also known as Corporate Wealth Defence) is described as "an army of lawyers, consultants, accountants, and more who get paid millions to help their clients hide trillions" - and is generally thought of as a vanguard of economic and legal actors involved in sustaining and hiding activities which hoard wealth from a wider (poorer) community, be it a nation, area or government.[1] [2] This can be done legally. Chuck Collins, heir to the Oscar Mayer fortune has somewhat confirmed the existence of The Wealth Defense industry and advocates against them on moral and emotional grounds. The language describing the phenomena originates within the political and behavioral sciences.
A ProPublica report on wealth inequality in regards to the richest people of the world is often cited as having shown the mechanisms of the modern wealth defense industry.[3] Philanthropist Chuck Collins is a key advocate regarding being a client of The Wealth Defense industry, having written a book on the topic, titled "The Wealth Hoarders: How Billionaires Pay Millions to Hide Trillions".[4]
In an interview with Brenda Melina of the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, The Panama Papers and the Paradise Papers are cited as well known examples of the Wealth Defense Industry.[5] [6] In 2017, Stanislav Markus and Volha Charnysh of Columbia and Cambridge respectively, performed a study of 177 post-soviet Oligarchs in Ukraine, and described Wealth Defense as aiding "oligarchs [to] benefit from direct power when the rule of law is weak."
Lena Ajdacic of Amsterdam University has described Wealth Defense as having three distinct strategies and also uncover marked differences across countries. In 2017, Jeffery Winters of Harvard University's American Society for Political and Legal Philosophy, identified Liberal Democracy as being complicit in the Wealth Defense Industry.[7] In 2023, the Cambridge journal "Perspectives on Politics" reported that over 11% of the world’s billionaires have held or sought political office, and have a strong track record of winning elections, and lean to the right ideologically. [8]
Shell companies and tax havens are cited as being mechanisms the Wealth Defense Industry.[9] It is claimed by Collins that Wealth Defense is not emotionally healthy for either party involved, in a Rolling Stone article he is quoted as saying; "These are people who are at the end of their professional careers, who are now looking back over what they’ve done and are saying, “Jeez, what have I done here? All I’ve done is help the richest people in society get a larger share of the pie.” According to Dedrick Asante-Muhammad of the National Community Reinvestment Coalition, the discriminatory policies and practices of the wealth defense industry have contributed to causing people of color to fall behind economically.[10] According to an IRS report provided to the Senate Finance Committee, 1.4 million wealthy Americans have not lodged tax returns during the years 2017 - 2020, reportedly withholding up to $65.7 billion dollars in revenue from the American government. It is understood that this practice is done consciously, as a means of defunding the IRS. [11]