Reply #6: It's not as easy as that [View All]

[david_vincent]

You're talking about major players here. The companies that engaged in this trading are partly owned subsidiaries of other companies in various other countries that are themselves subsidiaries and have complicated partnership agreements with other companies that subsidiaries or jointly owned by the same parent companies, etc. etc. and you'd have to go through layer upon layer of this kind of stuff to follow the money. It would be like disentangling a tangle of fishing line the size of your car. It's possible - at least theoretically - but it would take years. And who's going to underwrite such a project?
Bear in mind also that there are ways to hide completely the ownership of some companies. Costa Rica has a way for this to be done so that *no one* including the Costa Rican authorities knows who controls the company.
My bet is that the money trail would lead to Saudi Arabia.