GlobalEconomicCuratedmedium confidence

Corruption and Illicit Financial Flows

Money that should fund states is moved offshore at a scale that dwarfs aid.

Severity score

49.9

Serious · default weighting

Trajectory

Steady

What this is

Illicit financial flows, tax abuse and grand corruption drain public revenue from precisely the countries least able to lose it. The sums lost annually exceed total global development assistance several times over, and the enabling infrastructure sits in wealthy jurisdictions.

Score breakdown

Loss of life

26

Direct and attributable mortality, normalised across annual and cumulative tolls.

Lives negatively impacted

80

People displaced, injured, food-insecure, exposed or otherwise materially harmed.

Financial cost

86

Direct damage, lost output and health-system spend attributable to the event.

Environmental impact

6

Emissions, habitat and biodiversity loss, contamination and irreversibility.

Trajectory

40

Whether the situation is escalating, and how much worse it is plausibly getting.