On telephone betting alone, the MPs estimate that if all business moved offshore the government would lose £50m every year.
Yet, when Papaconstantinou learned the names of wealthy Greeks who were hiding their fortunes offshore, the government took no action.
Other bank-unfriendly bills include Barack Obama's proposed shake-up of offshore taxation.Moreover, government-backed banks are vulnerable to arm-twisting: four of them accepted a mere 29 cents on the dollar for their debt in Chrysler's restructuring.
To do so, however, they will need to consider three difficult measures: parking oil money offshore, opening government accounts to scrutiny and reforming subsidy-addicted economies.A northern star lights the wayInvesting much of their windfall offshore could help oil exporters to avoid a sharp rise in their currencies and the overheating of local economies (the so-called "Dutch Disease").
And next year online casinos will be legalised in an effort to regulate and tax a fast-growing industry that, although often British-owned, is served by computers offshore.The government is hoping to repeat the success it had earlier with the betting industry.
The comments follow two damning UNHCR reports examining the government's offshore detention regime, which concluded that family facilities on Nauru "raise serious issues about their compatibility with international human rights law".
A high court challenge to the Australian government's offshore processing regime is still on the cards for later this year, despite the passing of rushed legislation through both houses of parliament.
More than 72 children now in Australia – including 37 babies born in Australia to asylum seeker mothers – face being removed to Nauru after the high court's decision in the M68 case upholding the constitutionality of the government's offshore detention regime.
In Third World countries such as French Guinea and Angola, the fat tax dollars and signature bonuses that seal lucrative oil deals are siphoned out of government coffers and into offshore accounts of government strongmen.
Elsewhere too, Western oil firms are being forced offshore as nationalist governments curtail their involvement in big, easily tapped fields on land.
