ABSTRACT
Nothing could be further from the truth. Trusts law is of vital importance in the modern world. Trust funds are the largest investors in our stock markets (through pension funds and unit trusts, for example) and the law of trusts typically governs how our property passes after our deaths and how rights in co-owned homes are allocated. In an age of economic austerity – where a lack of public money has apparently necessitated cutting public services by 40% in each of the last two Parliaments – trusts are central to the international tax-avoidance industry which costs the British public purse many billions of pounds every year. International trusts are also central to the funding of international terrorism and serious organised crime. The beneficiary principle – that anodyne subject we studied in Chapter 4 – might be the last bulwark against an even greater flood of tax avoidance and an even greater amount of concealment of dirty money around the world.
