The Wealth Detective Who Finds the Hidden Money of the Super Rich

 

Thirty-two-year-old French economist Gabriel Zucman scours spreadsheets to find secret offshore accounts.

 

Gabriel Zucman started his first real job the Monday after the collapse of Lehman Brothers. Fresh from the Paris School of Economics, where he’d studied with a professor named Thomas Piketty, Zucman had lined up an internship at Exane, the French brokerage firm. He joined a team writing commentary for clients and was given a task that felt absurd: Explain the shattering of the global economy. “Nobody knew what was going on,” he recalls.

 

At that moment, Zucman was also pondering whether to pursue a doctorate. He was already skeptical of mainstream economics. Now the dismal science looked more than ever like a batch of elaborate theories that had no relevance outside academia. But one day, as the crisis rolled on, he encountered data showing billions of dollars moving into and out of big economies and smaller ones such as Bermuda, the Cayman Islands, Hong Kong, and Singapore. He’d never seen studies of these flows before. “Surely if I spend enough time I can understand what the story behind it is,” he remembers thinking. “We economists can be a little bit useful.”

 

 

 

發現超級富豪藏錢的財富偵探

 

 

 

 

 

32歲的法國經濟學家加布里埃爾•祖克曼(Gabriel Zucman)仔細查看電子表格，尋找秘密的離岸賬戶。

 

 

 

 

 

加布里埃爾•朱克曼(Gabriel Zucman)在雷曼兄弟(Lehman Brothers)破產後的那個週一開始了他的第一份正式工作。剛從巴黎經濟學院(Paris School of Economics)畢業的祖克曼就在法國經紀公司Exane找到了一份實習機會。他加入了一個為客戶撰寫評論的團隊，並被分配了一項讓人感覺荒謬的任務:解釋全球經濟的崩潰。“沒人知道發生了什麼，”他回憶道。

 

 

 

 

 

當時，朱克曼也在考慮是否要攻讀博士學位。他已經對主流經濟學持懷疑態度。如今，這門沉悶的科學看起來比以往任何時候都更像是一堆精心設計的理論，與學術界之外沒有任何關聯。但有一天，隨著危機的繼續，他發現有數據顯示，數十億美元正從百慕大、開曼群島、香港和新加坡等大型經濟體和較小經濟體流入和流出。他以前從未見過關於這些流動的研究。“當然，如果我花足夠的時間，我可以理解它背後的故事，”他回憶道。“我們經濟學家可能有點用處。”