Inside America’s Race to Hide the World’s Money

About this episode

The episode investigates how wealthy investors use trusts to hide their money and the implications for the American tax system.

Alessandro Chesser is a 40-year-old Silicon Valley entrepreneur. He’s married with two kids and was the first in his family to attend college. His grandfather immigrated from Sicily and worked as a school janitor so his family could have a better life. Skip forward a few generations, and Chesser is noticing the way wealthy investors hide their money to avoid paying taxes. He’s outraged and wants to upend the tax system, which he thinks is unfair to the everyday American worker. In Chesser’s mind, the realistic solution isn’t to reform the tax code, but to make it easier for average Americans to access one of the best-kept secrets of the superrich: trusts. Trusts have become big business in the US. They are now an industry worth trillions of dollars. But no one knows the exact number, because the trust industry is extraordinarily private. Trusts can last forever (literally), but there is no public registry for them. In fact, they are one of the main reasons why watchdog groups consider America to be the most secretive financial jurisdiction in the world. This week on Reveal , journalists Sally Herships and Leah McGrath Goodman investigate America’s shadowland of trusts. As the…

People in this episode

Hosts: Sally Herships, Leah McGrath Goodman

Guest: Alessandro Chesser

Topics covered

• trusts
• wealth gap
• tax system
• financial secrecy
• investors
• American workers

Keywords

• trusts
• wealth
• taxes
• financial secrecy
• investors
• American workers
• trust-friendly jurisdictions

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: Reveal, The Center for Investigative Reporting, PRX

Places: Silicon Valley, Sicily

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