Offshore Predation: Illicit Financial Flows and Beneficial Ownership Opacity in Resource-Rich African States.

Resource predation in fragile states is often attributed to domestic corruption, yet much of it depends on transnational financial systems that enable wealth extraction to move across jurisdictions. In resource-rich African contexts, elite accumulation is sustained through offshore secrecy, complex corporate structures, and permissive legal environments that make illicit wealth both portable and difficult to trace. The concept of offshore predation captures how these global financial infrastructures interact with weak domestic governance to facilitate large-scale extraction. Situated within debates on the political economy of corruption and global financial governance, the manuscript examines how international systems enable and sustain resource diversion. Focusing on South Sudan and Angola, with comparative reference to Nigeria, the study addresses three interrelated questions: what legal and financial mechanisms—including transfer mispricing, shell company networks, offshore trusts, and correspondent banking relationships—enable the diversion of oil revenues into private accounts; how international financial centres such as London, Dubai, Delaware, and Luxembourg provide the legal, institutional, and professional infrastructure that sustains illicit financial flows, and what forms of responsibility they bear; and what the developmental consequences of these flows are in terms of foregone public investment, weakened fiscal capacity, and their interaction with aid dependence. Methodologically, the study combines financial investigative analysis using Global Financial Integrity data, leaked materials such as the Pandora Papers, Africa Confidential reporting, court records from UK and US anti-corruption proceedings, and corporate registry analysis. It further incorporates